Link round up
A website I found early on when I was learning to read crochet charts is MyPicot. It’s got an extensive guide to crochet chart symbols, with both UK and US terminology in the key, and a bunch of free crochet stitch patterns as charts. They seem to be branching out into knitting as well, and I’ll be interested to see how that section grows.
A good source for knitting stitch patterns and knitting abbreviation explanations is KnittingFool. There’s also sweater pattern generators, where you choose from a small set of very basic sweaters, plug in your gauge and the desired chest measurement, and it gives you the information to knit a sweater. You do have to be comfortable with not having everything spelled out, though. I haven’t used it myself; I mostly go here for the stitch patterns.
A nifty crochet stitch, which the Pinterest post I found it through says is called sunburst. The text is, I think, in Finnish, but it has a clear photo tutorial.
Avoiding ugly joins in crochet, when working in the round.
http://www.crochet-world.com/newsletters/talkingcrochet/pages/TCNL2808_patt3.html shows the star stitch more clearly (though Google’s translation of the Finnish page was pretty hilarious in places!). It’s a pretty cool stitch. –Talk about a yarn eater!!!
Oh, thank you! That’s a big help.
I surely wouldn’t want a sweater from the stitch; it seems likely to be dense. A bag, though… Or maybe a rug?