Mainly hooking crochet borders

Recently I have been hooking crochet borders for a program that I taught earlier this month at my local knitting guild: Houston Knit at Night for the Chicks with Stix chapter. There were 20 odd ladies - the largest number I have taught in one go but as I reminded myself they were all learning the same thing. My regular weekly workshop involves helping up to 12 students with their own specific requirement on the individual crochet (or knitting!) project that they are working on. And I also teach one-to-one lessons.

I did A LOT of preparation for the program. As well as watching Edie Eckman's wonderful Craftsy class on borders (reviewed here on this blog), I made samples, wrote a handout and just had to buy three books on borders: 

Around the Corner Crochet Borders by Edie Eckman

The Finer Edge: Crocheted Trims, Motifs and Borders by Kristin Omdahl

The Complete Book of Crochet Border Designs by Linda P. Schapper
 

My favorite was probably the book by Edie Eckman. I like the way she provides border design charts as both horizontal borders as well as actually going around the corner. Edie doesn't leave you guessing what to do. Kristin Omdahl has a very modern take on borders and edges in her book and unlike the other two has project patterns which include the featured edgings. One of these is the incredible Memphis Bag which I am just going to have to make. It's gorgeous! Linda Schapper's book contains the largest number of borders of the three and I love how Linda categorizes her borders into different types. If I wanted a shell border I could look through dozens of patterns to find the one I like best.

For my samples I picked out single color borders from my new books, trying to show a range of different types of stitches (picot, shell, post stitch, bobble etc.). I also prepared square samples of simple border stitches on knitted squares: single crochet, picot, shell and crab stitch.

I gave the ladies prep work too: to bring a knitted square to add a crochet border to. I was impressed that almost everyone had actually done their homework and arrived with their squares ready to learn.  By the end of session I was admiring many pretty shell borders. Marvellous!

Review of Craftsy.com online class

I took my first ever online Craftsy.com class this month: Fantastic Finishes, Edgings and Borders by Edie Eckman. I've been asked to teach a crochet program at my local chapter Chix with Sticks of the Houston Knit at Night Guild. (I'm wondering how I get myself into these things!) I've decided to teach crochet borders for knitted projects since the majority of the members are knitters and this is a popular request from the knitting folk in the yarn store where I teach. And now inevitably I feel compelled to become a master at crochet borders. And to do this I have to learn from a guru in this field and for me that would be Edie.

I already have two Edie Eckman titles on my bookshelf: Beyond the Square Crochet Motifs and Connect the Shapes Crochet Motifs  And when I signed up to take my Craft Yarn Council knitting certificate I was assigned Edie as my master teacher. How daunting! She assessed my knitted swatches and interviewed me over the phone. (I passed but I'm a better crocheter!) 

Anyway the Craftsy class did not disappoint. It was really comprehensive and even had a section on crocheting on knitted borders. Perfect! I learnt A LOT. For beginners there are close up shots of Edie adding borders. She demonstrates two simple and three fantastic advanced borders. The written patterns and charts for these are provided in the class materials to print out. It was easy to pause and move through the lessons. There are also Q&As down the right hand side of the screen for students to ask questions and Edie replies. How useful!

I like the fact that when I returned to the Craftsy website I was right back at the place where I left off. There are seven lessons in this class and the longest ones are almost 30 minutes in length so you're not going to go through the whole course in one go.

So craftsy.com online classes get a big thumbs up from me and thank you to Edie for continuing to share her knowledge and skills. I'm now confidently hooking up border samples for next month's knitting guild program...

Are you bistitchual?

I think the term bistitchual is rather fabulous. It's defined along with a great example in the Urban Dictionary as:

 

The ability to create stitches in two crafts, e.g. knitting and crocheting.

 

Alena is bistitchual; she can both crochet and knit.
Penelope is not bistitchual; she can only knit.

 

I am one of the 49% of crocheters who also knit* and it's time for me to devote a little more time to improving my knitting skills now that the holiday gift-making is a distant memory.

I am embarking on the Craft Yarn Council's first knitting certificate. Hurrah! It's a six month long distance-learning course and my career in the yarn industry really began when I started my first CYC crochet certificate almost two years ago. Back then I didn't plan to actually get a job teaching crochet at that time. Read about it in my earlier post "How my crochet career began".

 

I have run a knitting and crochet workshop at my local yarn store every Friday afternoon for the last 16 months. I certainly knitted more frequently than crocheted in my younger years. The height of my knitting prowess was a sweater with a multicolored intarsia countryside scene (so twee!). In short, I'm not a beginner. Pattern support is the most common requirements at the workshop and I am pretty good at deciphering the symbols. However, having gained so much knowledge undertaking my two crochet certificates I feel that I have a duty to my knitting attendees to up my game to the same level. I want to be able to talk authoritatively about knitting best practice in the same way as I can for crochet and I know that the certificate will do this for me.

I just received details of my assignments today and my master teacher is the knit and crochet guru Edie Eckman. I own two of her books and I am totally in awe of her skills. I am so excited and albeit rather nervous about having her assess my work. Better get stitching!

*The State of Specialty NeedleArts Survey 2013, National Needlearts Association (TNNA)

It's all about the joining

My crochet group are off to a great start with the granny squares for our third charity project. I have just finished joining and edging the first baby blanket. Another member of our group has put together a second. I know this because she sent me a photo of her edging this week. It is marvelously elaborate and taken from a Japanese book of granny squares which has no English instructions in it whatsoever. Imagine that - just photos and charts. My edge is single crochet followed by crab stitch (reverse single crochet) and viola here it is pre-blocking.

My theory is that the beauty of the granny square blanket is all about the join. I have chosen a wonderful technique taken from one of my all time favorite books: Connect the Shapes crochet motifs by Edie Eckman. It's a join as you go continuous final round with a flat slip stitch connecting in the adjoining seam and best of all it's incredibly inconspicuous. I enjoy doing it. I never thought I'd say that about joining squares. There is an ever so cute flower in the corner of each join. It's fantastic.

I can date my obsession with granny squares back to two books I received for Christmas a few years ago: Crochet Motifs by Edie Eckman and The Granny Square book by Margaret Hubert. I also had a voucher for yarn that year so I remember buying Cascade 220 in a dozen odd non-matching colors and making huge numbers motifs from the books (there are 219 patterns in total). Looking back now I find this behavior slightly insane because the colors don't match and the sizes vary massively and they have been added to my large bag of "random crochet pieces to make into an amazing freeform creation one day." I wonder if anyone else out there has a bag like this?

Anyway I am happy to report that the group are really enjoying the granny squares mainly because they work up so quickly. One thing we are finding is that the size of the granny squares varies massively depending on each individual's tension so we are combatting this to a small extent by changing the hook size up or down. We cannot readily alter stitches or rows with granny squares as we did with the single crochet squares of our first project. So we are sorting our squares into different size piles at the pre-join stage. It's all fun!