Daveyyyy! Davey Crochet! (Get it? If you pronounce it phonetically...?)

Crochet is fabulous for letting you make things up on the fly. Embrace that aspect of it - knitting is slightly more rigid in that respect. Also, it does sound as though you have been doing a lot of crocheting - hats, scarves, mitts and toys? You are crocheting! Don't feel bad about not using a pattern - many people wish they had your creativity! Having said that, reading a crochet pattern is like learning to crack a code. Start easy and work your way up. You've already by-passed the whole 'learning stitches' part so now you just need to figure out how to understand the code. 1) There is a difference between UK & US terminology. Make sure you know which one your pattern uses. 2) Get acquainted with the abbreviations and work out what the various stitches are called. It's a bit like following a recipe book and remembering the difference between tb and tbsp. 3) Get yourself on Ravelry. It's fairly knit-centric but http://www.ravelry.com/groups/crochet-on-ravelry has its own http://www.ravelry.com/groups/crochet-liberation-front-headquarters over there. 4) Knitting is wonderful too but it's a different skill set. If I were you, I'd throw myself into crochet and focus on that for a while. 5) http://attic24.typepad.com/weblog/ is a super-popular UK-based crochet blog. I bet you can find some good hints there. Lucy specialises in colourful, easy projects.

http://www.powells.com/biblio/9780761139850 provides a jaunty and effective introduction to crochet. I learned the basics from it and really enjoyed it. It takes you through different stitches and includes a bunch of cute patterns. Wrt crochet vs. knit: What I tell folks who are trying to decide which to learn is that knitting is best for making rectangular or tubular things, and crochet is best for making circular or freeform things. Unless you're specifically interested in knitting sweaters (which are basically rectangular/tubular), I would stick with crochet. IMO crochet is much easier, since you only ever have two or three "live" stitches, so fixing mistakes is much easier. My advice would be to spend a year or so developing your skills in crochet. Then, if you're still hankering to knit, try http://www.powells.com/biblio/9780761128182, which does for knitting what The Happy Hooker does for crochet.

You want beginner patterns so I am going to share the one *I* want to do with my more rudimentary than yours even crocheting ability: http://www.lookatwhatimade.net/crafts/yarn/crochet/free-crochet-patterns/olive-crochet-octopus-puzzle/ There's also the http://www.lookatwhatimade.net/crafts/yarn/crochet/free-crochet-patterns/crochet-amish-puzzle-ball/ and the http://www.lookatwhatimade.net/crafts/yarn/crochet/free-crochet-patterns/mini-crochet-amish-puzzle-ball/ which makes good practice.

If you're not on http://www.ravelry.com already, sign up. Lots of free patterns for crocheting and knitting, plus forums, etc. GREAT resource. You can probably even get pattern reading help there. But ultimately, I'd recommend taking a trip down to your Local Yarn Shop (LYS) and seeing what they have available for classes, workshops, or just a few minutes of help to learn to read the patterns, etc. Patterns for crochet and knit are written differently and use a bit of different language, so you would need to learn to read that language. I had a heck of a time learning with knitting and kind hated how patterns were written, but since then I've gotten used to it. You'll just have to find a glossary of http://www.craftyarncouncil.com/tip_crochet.html orhttp://www.craftyarncouncil.com/tip_knit.html terms to follow until it becomes second nature. I knit, but I don't crochet yet. There's no reason you can't or shouldn't do both. I intend to learn to crochet after I get some more advanced knitting techniques down. I'd say pick which one you enjoy doing, learn that one decently, and then do the other one. As for whether you should knit or crochet first, some things to consider: 1. A long time knitting and crochet instructor at my area LYS has found in her nearly 20 years of teaching both that knitters have an easier time learning crochet than crocheters do knitting. Something about going from two needles to one hook vs going from one hook to two needles. 2. Crochet uses more yarn for similar projects than knitting, which can add to the expense. 3. Crochet is faster and is much easier for making things up as you go along. It depends most on what you want to do, but I'd pick one and stick with that for awhile until you think you're ready to branch out into the other. I plan to pick up crochet sometime in the next two years.

Hello fellow-crocheter! I am in a somewhat different position. I am pretty competent at rectangular things (have made a bunch of scarves), and am only ok at caps. I also can't read a pattern. A book I can recommend is http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0470879971/metafilter-20/ref=nosim/ It has lots of pictures (though I wish they were bigger) and takes you through all the stitches. It will get you into pattern reading. I would also love to make things like sweaters and mittens, and knitting seems like the better option.

I love the http://www.garnstudio.com/lang/us/kategori_oversikt.php. This is the site I used when I wanted to learn to read crocheting/ knitting patterns and start some new and exiting but easy starter projects. They have loads of free patterns but the best thing is they have loads of http://www.garnstudio.com/lang/us/video.php (also free). These really helped me understand patterns. They even have tutorial videos linked to specific patterns that are harder to understand and every pattern has a comments section where you can ask questions if you don't understand the pattern. Bonus: they have awsome patterns for kids, especially hats and such. I used to love crocheting, and find knitting rather boring until I started working with patterns and knitting bigger projects like sweaters. You're right in guessing that knitting is more suited to making bigger things. I don't know why, but knitting became much more fun to me when I started bigger projects. Now I have these phases where I love crocheting or love knitting. Or both. You can do both, no need to choose. If you are looking for big crochet projects, blankets are awesome and easy to make. I recently made http://www.garnstudio.com/lang/us/pattern.php?id=4478&lang=us one and I love it (even though it took me over a year to finish it, but whatever).

Are you basically decent at math like "if x stitches goes this far, then y distance needs z stitches (plus or minus one or two), and if my thing repeats every n stitches then the closest multiple will be z+2, so I will use that"? I get the feeling that you must be if you've been making it all up as you go along. If you are, then you want a good stitch source book like http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0762104058/metafilter-20/ref=nosim/. This kind of book just has lots of textures that can be substituted in for basic stitches, with notes about difficulty level, drape-y-ness, and so on. Then you can start with the most straightforward first-knitted/crocheted-sweater pattern and slap in blocks of whatever texture you like (doing the math to get the number of repeats and stitches correct) until you have your own unique sweater. (The beginning of the book is also a pretty decent, easy to reference guide to the very basics like notation and how to start and end a project.) By the way, a lot of the larger knit projects are modular, like granny squares (which are addictive).

Note: I'm not very interested in amigurumi.

http://www.interweavestore.com/fearless-knitting-workbook will decipher the Klingon for you. For real I saw it for the first time yesterday and you're the second person I'm recommending it to. Better explanations of how knitting works than I've seen ever.