Coastal Crochet

Hello! I'm back with another blog post!  Feeling refreshed after our half-term holiday in North Cornwall with my hubby, the kids and the dog. We spent cold but sunny days hiking different parts of the gorgeous coast path, enjoying views of the dramatic cliffs, exploring secluded beaches, rock pools and caves at low tide, cooking on a Rayburn stove in our cosy cottage and visiting a number of dog-friendly pubs. We used to visit this beautiful part of Britain every year in the Fall/Autumn before we moved to Texas. It was so good to be back after seven years! Our kids can certainly walk a lot further now!

Cornwall was a very fitting location, as Socktober's SockCAL2018 came to an end, for reading, reviewing and starting my first project from Coastal Crochet, a collection of crochet patterns inspired by the west coast of the United States, written by my friend and talented crochet designer Karen Whooley. 

I first discovered Karen when I started making crochet socks and have made several of her designs, socks and shawls, since then. I won a copy of her wonderful last book A Garden of Shawls listening to a live interview with Marly Bird. I test-crocheted Moonlight Socks for Karen, she gave me a discount for her patterns when I was teaching a crochet sock class at Houston Fiber Fest and most recently she kindly wrote a post for us for our Crochet Sock Blog Hop. Karen is wonderful. I could go on...

There are 12 gorgeous projects in Coastal Crochet - six shawls/scarfs, three sweaters/cardigans, a cowl and mitt set, a top and a hat. Each project has full written instructions, charts and a helpful schematic outline.  Karen has used beautiful yarn from indie dyers, which I love. And I've met two in person (and bought their lovely yarn) Karen from Round Table Yarns is from Texas and Nimblefingers hosts a trunk show for Sabrina at Anzula.

I would recommend this book for adventurous beginners or intermediates. The designs call for lace and fingering weight yarn so give fantastic drape but are more challenging to work with. And there are plenty of fun stitches and techniques used in the projects to keep things interesting - foundation chains, post stitches, cables and short row shaping. 

When I look at the designs I can tell that they are going to look even better in real life. I don't if you know what I'm what talking about when I say this. I want them to come out of the pages. I have started the first of the designs, Perspective, because I loved the look of the short row shaping and had suitable yarn in my stash - two balls of variegated silk merino lace weight yarn purchased from Nimblefingers just before we left this summer. 

My next two projects from the book, unless I become distracted which happens so easily, would be Tidepool, a cute hat made from post front double crochets with an intriguing hidden seam and Mist, a gorgeous cardigan constructed from three rectangles. Like Karen I love simple designs that look intricate.

Do head over to Karen's website for more information on Coastal Crochet. Karen sent me an electronic version of the book for free for this review (thank you Karen!) but I also bought a hard copy of the book on Amazon.co.uk to support her marvelous work and I need it on my shelf - I'm an avid collector of the best crochet books out there.

Life is about to become very busy again (back to the day job and a side gig as a trainee crochet tech editor (!!)) so I might not be blogging or podcasting for a while but you can find me on all the social media Instagram, Twitter and Facebook and also on Ravelry as Crafty Escapism. Hope you're all enjoying Fall y'all!

Listen to the Audio Podcast

A Garden of Shawls - Book Review & Giveway

Taking part in the AutumnWAL2017 made me seek out my WIPs and I found the shawl I made while on holiday in Colorado and have duely blocked and finished it. Hurray!

This is the second shawl that I've made from Karen Whooley's latest book A Garden of Shawls so I thought I was in a good place to provide a review. I also contacted Karen to see if she would be able to offer a giveway for my blog readers and she agreed to provide a electronic version so that I could make it available internationally (I know I have regular readers/listeners in the US, UK and Australia, probably other places too).

I wasn't going to buy this book, I was being strong, because even though I wanted it I am sort of in denial about my great love of crochet shawls. Anyway, it was meant to be because I was listening to the amazing Marly Bird interview Karen Whooley and there was a giveaway of the book at the end and I won! I was SO amazed! Listen to the interview and you can hear me laughing hysterically. And so the book arrived and I've made two shawls and there are more that need to be made. I am beyond helping and I don't really care.

I love that fact that this book is self-published and also that Karen has used yarn entirely produced by indie dyers. All twelve of the shawl designs are lace or fingering weight. But Karen does have advice for using heavier weight yarn too if that is your jam. Every shawl has full written instructions and is charted and also there's a schematic of what it looks like so you know the shape of it. I think that's quite important because I'm definitely drawn to particular shapes of shawls - I have my favorites. The designs are inspired by Italian lace and are absolutely gorgeous.

I made Violaceous first because it called for lace weight yarn and there are 8 pages of charts for it, every single one of the 158 rows is charted. I was kind of testing myself to see if I could make it or if I'd go crazy in the process. But I actually loved it and couldn't put my hook down when making it. All that hooking of crochet socks in lightweight yarns has really paid off. And when I wore it to the yarn store where I work everyone thought it was knitted (they are all knitters so that's a massive compliment for them) and I wore it both days to Houston Fiber Fest and loads of people were asking me who the designer was...

The second shawl I made was Foliole. I was drawn to this one because the shapes looked like mitochondria cell drawings (I was helping my 7th grader study for her end of year finals). I know that's a really odd reason for a stitch design to appeal to you. But anyway it is my latest shawl so it's the one I love the best and I'll be wearing it every day until I made the next one (which is already on my hook). I'm a SSH - serial shawl hooker.

To enter the giveaway to be in with a chance to win an electronic version you can follow me on Instagram or Facebook and leave a comment or send me a message on Ravelry. I'm craftyescapism in all these places. You've got a week to do this. I'll randomly select a winner on October the 16th. Good luck and have a wonderful week everybody!

Listen to the Audio Podcast

Conversations at Houston Fiber Fest

Oh my goodness where do I start? The best thing about the Houston Fiber Fest for me personally were the face-to-face conversations I had with so many folk who are just as passionate about fiber as I am. I could fill several posts with all the wonderful people I met up with and what we spoke about. I will have to limit myself!!

First up was Beth Bower from Inner Loop Dyeworks who had provided me with yarn support for my sock design. How kind! I left samples of my leftover crochet sock at her booth. And yes I am seeing pattern sales on Ravelry appear in my in-box since I released it last week!

Then I visited Karen at Round Table Yarns. She provides yarn support to Karen Whooley who as you may know is one of my favorite crochet designers. I wore one of her shawls Violaceous both days from her latest book "Garden of Shawls".

I had a fascinating conversation with Stacey and Penny at the Brazen Stitchery booth about sock blanks. I'd just found out about these from my friend Claudia in the latest episode of her Crochet Luna Podcast Sock it to me! and I had to buy one to see how it worked up in crochet.

My friend Diane had saved me a seat at the Crochet Meet up Table and there I met my two fellow crochet teachers at the event: Kristi Millsap who was teaching an Introduction to Tunisian Crochet and Carole Fitzgerald who was teaching Crochet Fingerless Gloves. They were both great and we compared notes on what we were teaching.

Jessica from Houston Fiber Friends had arranged a meetup for us too. We sat at a table inside the foyer and shortly afterwards starting shopping together. Yes I did shop as well!! Listening to one of our group, Mel, talk about the joys of spinning led me to purchase a drop spindle!

At the Foggy Hollow Ranch booth, farmer Lynda sold me fiber for my new spindle from Demetri the highland sheep who is not only sweet natured but has fleece that is easy to spin, so I've been told. Fun times ahead!

And finally I just loved my twelve fantastic students at my Crochet Sock Techniques class - they were all sooo lovely, had great crochet skills and worked extremely hard. 

Anyway I hope you enjoyed my brief round up. I am now off to the UK this week to visit my family so I'll be taking a little blog holiday for a few weeks. I will return at the end of July. Have a wonderful summer everyone!!

Listen to the Audio Podcast

The Anatomy of a Crochet Sock

The class I'm teaching at Houston Fiber Fest "Crochet Sock Techniques" is just four weeks away so socks are in my dreams and dominating my life right now.

I happily knit socks years ago merrily following the pattern without thinking too much. But it's being different being a teacher. They ask you questions. Helping a workshop attendee in the yarn store with their socks I realized I had no idea what turning the heel entailed or what exactly a gusset was. I only had the vaguest idea of how a sock was actually constructed. So when one of my longtime students wanted to learn to crochet socks I had a duty to find out and so the pursuit of the ultimate crochet sock began.

I have made a color-coded sock for my class as a teaching aid. I got this great idea from Karen Whooley's fabulous pattern book "I can't believe I'm crocheting socks". I finally cracked crochet socks with the help of this book. And I now know where the elusive gusset is. My demo sock is the basic cuff down version and each part is a different color - cuff, leg, heel flap, heel turn, gusset area, foot and toe. It's going to be very helpful.

And my crochet sock fame has spread and the lovely Claudia of the Crochet Luna Podcast in California asked me to be her "resident crochet sock expert" earlier this month on her new Ravelry thread "Sock it to me" - how cool is that? - so you can join me over there if you'd like to show us your socks or chat about the merits of different heel constructions and the like... How fun!

And if you're near Houston Texas I know there are still places on my crochet sock class on June 25th. I'd love to meet you in person! Grab your spot here.

Here's the Audio Podcast

 

A serious case of crochet sock startitis

I have developed a serious case of sock startisis. In case you're not familiar with the term here's the Urban Dictionary definition:

Startitis: noun - Repeatedly starting new projects while still having multiple uncompleted projects.

 

Melanie is plagued by startitis. She frequently starts knitting something new rather than finish her other incomplete projects.

 

 

 

I am definitely making great progress on my summer mission to find the ultimate crochet sock pattern and I'm learning SO MUCH about socks but I now have five socks started but not completed. It feels a little excessive.

Sock #1 is the Survival Socks pattern that appear in an earlier post of mine The Hunt for the Ultimate Crochet Sock Begins and I'm working on this with one of my students in the weekly workshop I run on a Friday at my local yarn store. And I'm almost there. It's a toe up design and I'm just finishing off the cuff ahead of my student so that's fine. 

Sock #2 is the current most popular sock on Ravelry coincidentally called the Ultimate Crocheted Sock (with an -ed) by Dorothy Hardy. This time the pattern called for an extended single crochet stitch and I just LOVE how stretchy this stitch makes my sock compared to single crochet. However, still being the sock novice I need photos really and there was an error in the pattern which threw me a bit. And something odd happened with my gauge - the sock is huge. (I have since discovered that I need to make the sock 1/2 inch to 1 inch smaller than my foot circumference because this stitch will stretch.) #2 has been abandoned.
 
Sock #3 is above. It's from Karen Ratto-Whooley's absolutely super book I Can't Believe I'm Crocheting Socks which I bought recently. It's the cabled sock and I'm using Premier Yarns Wool-Free Sock Stripes yarn in the Phoenix colorway purchased from Hobby Lobby. I had intended to make a basic sock from Karen's book. She has both cuff-down and toe-up basic sock patterns in the books. But all of my sock stash is in fingering / sock weight and the patterns call for DK weight. It would be more sensible to start with thicker yarn and a bigger hook and work down to fine yarn so I can see the reason for the yarn weight choice. The basic sock patterns have extremely good photo tutorials with differently color coded parts of the sock. Looking at these I was able to visualize exactly what happens at different parts of a sock. For the cuff down pattern there is the cuff, leg, heel flap, heel turning, gusset, foot and toe. SO helpful!

The most recent socks that I've started #4 and #5 are not entirely my fault because I am working to someone else's deadline - Rohn Strong has a July sock crochetalong (sock #4) and also started a sock club this month (sock #5) which I couldn't really resist.

Well better get back to the socks..... Hope your week is going wonderfully!!