Wow! Another year has come and gone before our very eyes! Amazing how time flies when you are covered in fuzz and surrounded by hookers…um…wait, that didn’t sound quite right!
The CLF has once again shown how might the hook can be, in the classiest of ways by proving that what everyone says “can’t” be done, can and is done. You, my friends, have made me proud.
We have grown from strength to strength gaining almost 2000 people to our ranks in one year! We began 2010 with 4300 minions, by March we numbered 5,000, as of today we number 6210 on the CLF HQ message board on Ravlery.com, and almost 2000 on our Facebook page! Not to mention our Twitter presence, but for some reason I keep losing followers who are named “HorneyBoyz342″…I think they don’t realise what kind of hookers we’re talking about!
Besides volume, we have delivered what we said could be done.
The CLF had Team Flaming Hooks in the Ravelympics, and we made our members proud earning many medals!
We partied like it was 1999 all through March during our co-sponsored NATCROMO party on Ravelry.com. As always the FreeForm game was a hit!
April 19th 2010 the 2nd annual Flamie Awards, showed record voting and listeners on the Getting Loopy Podcast.
This summer saw a frantic Fearless Leader making sure the Crochet@Cama 2010 retreat came off, and it did! Thank you to all the sponsors, members, and our wonderful partner Center For Wooden Boats for making our retreat a memorable experience! Without the wonderful donations of cash from supporters, yarn from Plymouth, Jelly Yarns, and Premier, as well as a generous yarn donation from Coveted Yarns owner Robert Porter (Thanks Robert!!) our yarn tasting couldn’t have happened! Pinch Knitter Yarns in Stanwood was a huge supporter offering the shop on it’s day off and helping us sell registrations! Thank you to Sirkku, Perk and June!
As summer melted into Fall, more donations rolled in from designers to a company known for it’s crochet supplies! Boye was wonderful enough to contact me before the retreat and offered to send us some of their hooks! WOW! What a haul! no one left the retreat without multiple hooks in their hot little hands! THANK YOU BOYE!!
On top of Boye, we got a little somethin somethin when Vicki Blizzard from Premier yarns found out about the retreat on Facebook, and offered us yarn for the goody bags & the yarn tasting! THANK YOU PREMIER!!! The yarn was great, and it helped make our yarn tasting fantastic 😀 Love the sparkles!
So another huge round of thanks go to: Vashti Braha (and Doris Chan!) of DesigningVashti.com, Margaret Hubert of MH Design Originals, Mary Beth Temple of Hooked for Life Publishing (and Getting Loopy Podcast), Drew “The Crochet Dude” Emborsky, Ellen Gormley of Go Crochet!, Shannon Mullett-Bowlsby ShibazGuyz Designs, Marlaina (Marly) Corbett Bird of YarnSports Designs (YarnThing Podcast), Karen Ratto Whooley of KRW Knitwear Studios, Delma Myers, Jimbo Price of Jimbo’s Front Porch, Deb Homola (Beautiful Yarn Totes!), Lisa (Abby Normal on Ravelry) from In Stitches Emporium, Bonnie Pierce for signing the bullion hooks Jimbo made for our auction and more! Deb & Don Burger for donating some of the proceeds of the sales of the wonderful CDs at the retreat!
Special thanks go to Jeff Wheeler for baking muffins for us all, just because he loves me. Yousif Wheeler for being a great guide and entertainer of wandering & lost crocheters. All of the great spouses who were so supportive of their crocheting other halves, I think I saw a lot of smiles on your faces…
Our Retreat was wonderful! Perfect weather, good friendships rekindled and new ones made, crochet classes that were world-class, good food and drink, laughter and song, and none of us went home empty-handed! Participants came from as far a field as Puerto Rico, New Jersey, North Carolina, Montana,Kentucky, Tennessee, Alaska, Texas, Oregon, and of course Washington State.
We started the Puget Sound Scape Project, a collaborative experiential art exhibit that I hope will be ready for exhibition sometime in 2013!
Not to rest on our laurels we’re hard at work planning the 2011 retreat, and already have folks reserving cabins at Cama Beach State Park to make sure they don’t miss out on a great event! (Registration beings in May 2011)
In December we began a new tradition called Pre Winter Crochet Week, just to move us from helpless negativity to positive proactive crochet goodness! It worked, you guys are awesome.
We have also started a campaign to save our favorite crochet podcasts, Getting Loopy and The YarnThing. Here’s the deal, you know how they say crocheters are cheap? Well, pat yourselves on the back, we’re donating like fiends to both podcasts, and well YarnThing still needs more help, we’re more generous than the pointy stick listeners…hmmmmmmmmmm….cheap you say? Yay Crochet!
So as you can see 2010 was a damn fine year my fellow crocheters all and I’m proud to be standing up front running with scissors and screaming HOOK ON! LIVE LONG!
May 2010 pass into fond memory, and may 2011 surpass all of our wildest dreams…
Remember this… Fear not the dark, for always the light penetrates to illuminate and guide us. That’s what flaming hooks are for!
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