The CLF Turns TWO!

Why am I suddenly having the urge to sit on the floor and SCREAMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!

Cause the CLF is turning TERRIBLE TWO! WHOOO HOOO!

You know what that means? We’re my favorite age. Yes, I’m one of those weirdos that adores toddlers and teens Individuation is so cool to witness and partake in!

So, what shall we do for our birthday? Besides shout to the world that we have over 3800 members! And are now officially the world’s LARGEST crochet group! WHOOT!

So, what do you guys want to do?

Fair Week again…and the Sock Summit!

If you’ve been with the CLF over the past two years (which by the way our Birthday is July 26th!) then you will know that for about two weeks a year my life is consumed by the local community fair! I love it!

Today I went out to the fair grounds, opened up the old log cabin, and swept, mopped, and dusted. Things weren’t too bad, no rat droppings (yay!), a few mice had tried to take up residence, but thank heavens were not in evidence. I do not have to paint, or do any major repairs to the inside of the building. Starting Tuesday from 10 am until 6pm and on Wednesday from 10am to 8pm I will be recieving entries for the Hand Spinning and Fleece Department at the Stanwood Camano Community Fair. This really is the “Best lil’ fair in the West!”

If you are in the Puget Sound Area and want to have some real old fashioned fun with the family or sweetheart come on out! I’ll be running around doing Superintendant type stuff, but let the folks in the log cabin know you’re on the fair grounds and I’ll try to meet up with you!

We have the best time every year, and we’d love to see you! And yes, of course crochet is very represented!

Oh and the Sock Summit! I’ll be leaving on Thursday Aug. 6 to head down to my friends’ house in Oregon City, Oregon (near Portland), to stay for five whole days! YAY! Some of that will be playing with sock yarn, and sockie kind of activities at the Sock Summit. Some of that visit though is just for me, unadulterated visiting with folks! YAY!

If you’re at the Sock Summit I hope to run into you at the mega vendor’s market, that’s where I’ll be lurking!

Interview: Teresa Marcel of Divine Women Designs

I had the unique pleasure of meeting Teresa in Portland at the Fall Knit and Crochet Show in 2008. Teresa was there to launch her design company, Divine Women. Teresa has a quiet elegance, and a definate love and affinitity for adroit color choices. A few months ago I asked her if I could do an interview on the CLF blog, because I love her simple elegance and whimiscal designs. I also adore the fact that her designs are CROCHET, she may expand into the stick patterns later, but thus far she is focusing on crochet and teaching people about how to use color.

Here’s a photo of one of her from this past Spring’s Knit and Crochet Show in Portland! I don’t know that she even knew I took this picture, so SURPRISE Teresa. I was so thrilled to read the answers to the interview questions. I have to say I’m not very scientific about who I approach etc, to befriend, or get to know at conferences. Sometimes, I am just drawn to someone, for what ever reason, and I really felt drawn to Teresa before even speaking to her! After reading the interview, I had to chuckle, intuition was right on again! I like her even more now!

You can find the wonderful work of Divine Women at www.DivineWomenCreativeStudio.com

Question: How long have you been designing?

 

I suppose I could say I have been designing since I was 9 or 10 years old. My mother gave me an old treadle sewing machine – which was an antique even then! – and I started making clothes for myself, my sisters and my dolls. We lived in rural Brazil on a pig farm, so there were lots and lots of muslin pig feed sacks. Some were finer than others, but most of them were pretty rough and had printing all over them, which I could cut around, or use the printing to add color here and there. There were no sewing patterns, so I just ‘eyeballed’ and cut what I thought the shape ought to be. Then I would use thread and yarns to embellish. Oddly, however, my mother — who made all our clothes — would not let me wear any of my own creations off the farm!

 

 

Question: What do you love about crochet most?

 

I love the meditative quality of it. It is restful, also — often times, when I’m very tired, I sit down with my crochet and soon find myself relaxed, my energy renewed. I also love the fact that I can create my own fabrics, textures and color combinations through crochet.

 

 

Question: What is your favorite fiber?

 

I love working with cotton. Not terribly exciting, I know, but I love the variety of textures one can achieve with it. In addition, it is a natural fiber which happens to be extremely versatile, wearable and practical. I’m excited about the new organic cottons coming out, as well as the bamboo combinations.

 

 

Question: You love color and it’s use, where did you get your interest in color? 

 

I remember lying on the grass as a young child, framing different bits of my view with my hands and wondering if everyone saw color in the same way. After a while, in my child-like unscientific way, I concluded that people must not – for, if they did, everyone would like the same colors! Still, it seemed to me that there were plenty to go around, particularly in tropical Brazil! 

 

I soon noticed, however, a definitive preference for certain colors, and definitive versions of them. Once, while shopping for sewing and crafts supplies in a “Armarinhos” store in Sao Paulo with my mother, I fell in love with a sheet of very simply, gorgeously turquoise little buttons. I simply had to have them, but could not give my mother a good reason. She must have seen the need in me, because she bought them. I’ve used a few here and there over the years, and there are still a few left in my button box 40 odd years later.

  

It wasn’t, however, until I was in my late twenties and living in Alaska that I really got interested in the process of combining colors. I had my own business doing custom machine knitting and was called upon to suggest color combinations for customers. Some worked well, and others didn’t, so I began to study color, its symbolism, its psychology. This became an ongoing study which continues to today. Just last month I completed a teacher certification course at Colour Affects, UK in London to become their only certified teacher, as well as consultant, in North America. At the moment I am working on refining the definitions of the psychological and emotional effects of individual colors. 

 

 

Question: Why did you choose to use the female myths as a theme in your designing?

 

Myths, legends and fairy tales, like color and needle arts, have always fascinated me. Although I was attending Brazilian schools, I taught myself to read English so that I could read the myth and fairy tale books that my parents had taken to Brazil with us when we moved there.  This interest remained with me all along, but it got quite a boost nearly a decade ago, when, while living in England, I completed a three and a half year diploma program in psychotherapeutic counseling. My favorite unit was on mythology. The course brought myths to life, clearly showing how they apply to our own lives here and now, and particularly to the psychotherapeutic process. 

 

Eventually, two things occurred to me: first, that the myths as they have come down to us usually  have a decidedly patriarchal skew, which inherently minimizes the feminine aspect. Second, why keep them in the psychotherapeutic process? Why not bring myths into our daily lives and activities, so that we can benefit from their wisdom without going into therapy? What better than to connect them to, and ground them through, very physical and creative activities such as crochet? And, of course, since the great majority of crocheters are women, I imagined that most of us would rather focus on the long neglected feminine aspects of the myths. So that is what I do: I take a portion of a myth or story, put myself in the female protagonist’s shoes and retell the story from her perspective, with particular attention to the psychological, heartfelt aspects of the experience.

 

Question: What is your favorite design?

 

Whichever design I’m working on! I have to be absolutely in love with a design in order to get it from concept through to pattern — while making at least four samples along the way! (All Divine Women products come in four colorways, so four samples need to be made.)

 

Question: What inspires you to create?

 

It is difficult to define just what inspires me to create. I have noticed, however, that I may have a long list of ‘to-dos’ (which I usually do), projects to finish, samples to make, etc – and in the middle of it all I get this urge to figure out what I can do with the gorgeous blue yarn that has been sitting there patiently, tempting and taunting me to make something with it… It’s as if it has been waiting for me to figure out what it’s supposed to become and finally says ‘enough already’, and I have to get on with discovering what it’s meant to become. 

 

Question: When did you start crocheting?

 

I don’t quite remember when I learned to crochet – my mother taught me along with sewing and knitting when I was quite young. I did more sewing during my teenage years than anything else, however. It wasn’t until I was in my junior year in college, and an exchange student in France, that I started crocheting in earnest. I bought a little paperback book in French called “Guide du Crochet” which I treasure to this day. It contains nearly 400 pages of crochet stitches with simple, clear directions on how to execute them, each one illustrated with black and white photos. It’s my little crochet bible, very dog-eared, but holding up amazingly well after 30+ years! I’m afraid it has rather spoiled me for crochet directions in English, which I actually find difficult to follow – which is a decided challenge for me when writing patterns, causing me to try all that much harder to make the directions really, really clear!

 

Question: If you could offer one piece of advice to other crocheters, what would that be?

 

Be adventurous. Don’t let anyone tell you it can’t be done. As they say in Brazil, there is always a ‘jeitinho’ – a way to do it, adjust it, or go around it!

 

 

Question: If you could say one thing to the world, what would that be?

 

Feel. Create. Be Divine!

Set My Picot Free Award Winning Clones Lace

Clones Lace

Originally uploaded by stitchlily

One of our dear CLF members, aka StitchLily, took a class on Clones Lace in in Clones, Co. Monaghan, Ireland. Being that Stitchlily is Irish, and was trying to get more into her Irish Crochet Heritage and the fact that she did this IN HER CLASS…says to me that Stitchlily SET OUR PICOT FREE!

Stitchlily, this is fabulous, gorgeous,and a beautiful “practice” piece! I can’t wait to see what else you make with all your new hot crochet skillz!

This piece is awarded the CLF Set My Picot Free Award for outstanding crochet excellence, and a good showing of the clones knot, which isn’t used often enough IMHO.

Competition Ammendment & 2010 Retreat update!

Ok, real quick like the competition has an ammendment for entries! You can just send me links to your photos if you have them stored on a site like Flickr, or Photobucket. If I can’t blog them from there I will ask you for files later when we go to do the blog expose, especially the two big winners!

NEXT ITEM!

The 2010 Retreat. On the LONG CLF To-Do list, the Retreat falls somewhere in the middle. I finally got some great photos of the place up, no inside pics but you can go here to Bec Thomas Photography’s website and see a gorgeous interior shot.http://www.becthomasphotography.com/Bed.jpg

I even tested the swings yesturday; they work just fine!

 

To see fabulous photos, and a little information about the venue (and please bookmark the page because more info will be coming out by October 2009) go to: http://www.crochetliberationfront.com/retreat.html  the photogallery is at http://www.crochetliberationfront.com/camabeachphotos.html

News and more on Drape Competition!

First Iwould love to share the great news that Mary Beth Temple’s Hooked for LIfe is going into it’s second printing! Hah, we kept saying the crocheters could read! Congratulatoins to Mary Beth Temple on that brilliant good news, and I have to admit that after the review here on the CLF Blog; I have read and read the book at least five times Love it!

I WANT MORE LIKE THIS!  

By the way, it’s Monday and that means Mary Beth Temple’s LIVE podcast happens at 9pm Eastern/6 Pacific at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/mary-beth-temple! Don’t miss her show!

And more information about the competition!

Someone posed this thought/question “Is it not unfair to have lace entered or open work because they automatically drape?”

Nope. It’s not unfair, and one reason is that they do not always automatically drape. I make lace so tight I don’t need starch. And, if you use worsted weight yarn and a g hook you get stiff no matter what, you may end up with a “drapier” fabric that way, but it will not necessarily produce drape.

We want every kind of drape you can think of in crochet: Solid fabric, open work, lace, swatches of all of those…what ever. Send in your photos PLEASE!

The more PROOF we have the better, and I promise a WHOLE BLOG PAGE to the results!

Remember the competition ends August 9th! I want pictures!

What is drape? What qualifies as an entry?

So we’ve had a few questions about drape on the CLF board, so I thought I would answer them here, and then you can decide if your fabulous hooking goodness is drapey enough to enter into the competition. And for the love of all that is fuzzy PLEASE do enter! We want to show the world the drapiness that crochet can and does give us when we want it to…get that WHEN WE WANT IT TO! It’s again about choices

Drape is the word we use to describe a fabric (of any kind) that has movement and flow to it. It will “hang well”, it does not stand up on it’s own. You want drape in certain kinds of skirts, some sweaters, shawls, throws etc, you don’t want drape in socks, or baskets (in general) or some handbags. In crochet (and in knit) excessive drape will me extreme stretch so you don’t want alot of drape in places where you have stresses on seams (such as shoulders and bust lines…you can reinforce those spots.

Right now I’m making a gorded tunic with broomstick lace elements, it’s nice and drapey, and it will be lined with a satin under blouse, which is also drapey but not stretchy like the crocheted fabric. They yarn I am using is a brushed bamboo/cotton, and I’m using a K hook, and a size 37 needle to make the broomstick lace. If I were using a g or h hook there would be far less drape to the fabric, and none at all should I not employ the broomstick lace.

What will qualify as an entry, a) it must be crocheted by you b) a good photo of the item that shows it’s drape (movement flow c) you giving me permission to publish your photo here on the blog (cause how else is we gonna show the world we be cool other wise? And I will not publish photos without permission.)

Here’s a picture of the inspiration for the skirt, which is a little girl’s capelet I made to practice my new broomstick lace mad skillz It’s made with washable wool and polyester ribbon yarn (do not try this at home folks, bad fiber combo when trying to frog! LOL)…

COMPETITION! Baby Got Drape!

Ok, I got to thinkin’. That last post was more of the rantings of a very stressed out,  Fearless Leader. You see yesturday and today I was finishing up the IRS 1023 form for our Friend’s of the Library group and EGADS I just wasn’t thinking. Nothing quite like having not only the fate of your group, but your local library on your shoulders to cloud the brain!

Anyway, last night as I madly rearranged my office/bedroom (yes, it’s a control thing. The world was out of control so I was cleaning at midnight…I never said I was sane.) I thought ‘Egads, this is the perfect competition!”

So folks, I have a copy of the FIRST EVER Book and a t-shirt up for grabs for first and second place in the Baby Got Drape Competition!

Here are the rules:

1) Any one can submit

2) Please send a photo with permission to print on the web of your crocheted item (yes, it must be crocheted) that displays fabulous drape.  If you like watermark or place your copyright information across the photo.

3) You can be professional, or amateur.

4) Please list which fiber/yarn and which size hook and stitch pattern you used to achieve said drape. The item can be however old, as long as you own the right to photograph said item and you made it, you are eligible.

5) Competition closes August 7th, 2009

I will chose the First and Second place winner, and in order to win you MUST send me a valid email address so I can contact you in order to get your mailing information!

Please send photos (no larger than 500×500 pixels) to this EMAIL ADDRESS!  with the subject line reading: BABY GOT DRAPE!

Baby Got Drape!

Vashti Braha brought up a good statement on Twitter…We keep getting accused of not having drape…

In the infamous words of Blue from Foster’s House of Imaginary Friends…”Aw COME ONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!”

Give me a break. Of course you can have drapey crochet. It depends on the fiber, hook, and stitch pattern. Huh, kinda like in the other craft.  I mean each fabric is created with a property in mind. Sometimes we want stretch, some times we want no stretch, some times we want to have drape and sometimes we do not. HELLO WORLD…it’s called options, and choices.

Once again may I reiterate, understanding fiber properties is the key to achieving the look, and feel you wish to have in your projects. You can not use a “bouncy” stretchy wool and get the drape of say, Merino wool. Merino has very little stretch memory (especially commerically processed Merino they take all the life out of it), and so it drapes much like a plant fiber (linen, cotton etc)…Obviously unless you are using a mongo hook with kitchen cotton a J hook isn’t going to give you drape, right? I mean really think about it, you have to have some ease in your stitches to achieve drape.

Just making a little point here, of course we can have drape if we want drape. Duh…duh and more duh. Before you let some ignorant person put down your crochet, and say it can’t have drape just ask them how they know this? Are they repeating the information from someone, without EVER having checked out to see if it’s a fact or not?

And if you happen to be making a basket out of crochet at the time, say, “Sure I can get drape, but how would my basket stand up then?”

Ignorance astounds me.

Interesting times…

So, there I was feeling all sad because I had to make a choice as to whether I went to Buffalo for some awesome crochet fiber fraternization, or upped the memory in the old laptop…Then I have a person PM me on Ravelry asking if I was going to go to the Sock Summit in Portland. My first thought was, “Isn’t that for knitters?”

Then I remembered that my friend, Karen Whooley, was teaching down there, and so I used the link on the front page of Ravelry to look at the website. Karen is teaching some pretty fun crochet sock classes, so there’s at least a bone being thrown to crochet. Not a big bone, but a bone and that’s something. I love crochet socks, I love designing crochet socks, in fact my best selling and favorite sock pattern (and first one that ever got published “for real”) is my Looks Knit, Great Fit Sock Pattern.

So, in reading the website, I see the vendors market…AHHHHHHHHHHH Fibery goodness. Yummy, fibery goodness, big big big vendor’s market…lots of opportunity to spread the good crochet word…And an opportunity to really bring home the point that the Crochet Liberation Front is PRO-Crochet and not anti-knit. An opporunity to wear some really awesome socks and show off the mad sock skills that crocheters possess Ah yes, it is a true moment to evangelize the Crochet Good News! Hookaleuia I say! Let’s show em what we can do…

I’m a little sad that the sock museum doesn’t really give room for crocheted socks. Which is sad, because all through the ’30’s, 40’s and 50’s crocheted stockings were quite the thing. Beautiful lacey affairs that really were sexy and practical. But, I don’t think it’s any anti-crochet sentiment, I think it’s oversight…and like I said, I’m going to spread the good crochet news

So,  I will get to play with fiber, make a little noise, and have some fun in my favorite town on the planet. I also get to stay with my dear and awesome friends in Oregon City, and have some R&R after a very busy summer.

So, I guess things have just played out the way they were supposed to. A) I can afford this trip, B) I get to visit with my friends C) I don’t miss out on fibery fun! D) I can stir the pot even more in a heavily stick dominating arena GRIN…Oh now, I’m not going to make trouble, you know me, far too diplomatic for that, but let’s see if we can make some crochet positive change for the next Sock Summit