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WIP Wednesday: more crocheting and metalworking!
Hey, guys! As you know, this weekend I went to the Pittsburgh Knit & Crochet Festival... and it was super-busy! Stuffed Animals In between customers at the booth, I had a chance to start crocheting some animal pieces: Can you tell what they're going to be? I also got started on making a mosquito for my Stuffed Animals class: (I finished him in class... I'll show you pictures on [...]
What does the number in parentheses mean in a crochet pattern?
Have you ever looked at a crochet (or knitting) pattern and wonder what those numbers at the end of the line are? Those numbers are the stitch count for that line of the pattern... in other words, how many stitches you should have in that row/round (6 stitches in the above example). Sometimes a pattern may be more explicit and say "6 sc" (meaning there should be 6 single crochet stitches), [...]
Lessons on how to wear a long scarf
As you may know, I've spent this weekend at the Pittsburgh Knit and Crochet Festival... and I've been having a great time. I've learned a lot... but do you want to hear the most exciting thing I've learned all weekend? I learned a super-awesome new way to wear a long scarf! If you're like me (well, at least the me a few days ago), your standard way to manage a long scarf is to fold it in half, [...]
Update from the Festival
I'm having a great time at the Pittsburgh Knit & Crochet Festival... so I wanted to share some photos! Tim and I got to Pittsburgh on Thursday to set up our booth: And on Friday, we donned our FreshStitches t-shirts! All weekend, I've had amazing students in my classes and meeting fantastic people at the booth. In the evenings, Tim and I have been trying to squeeze in as much [...]
FO Friday: a squid and a crocheted necklace
Happy Friday! I spent most of my week preparing for the Pittsburgh Knit and Crochet Festival (where I am now, yay!), but I managed to finish two projects Squid! This squid was a custom order- and I'm quite proud! He's almost 2 feet long, and not at all gross and slimy like a real squid! Crochet Necklace I completed my first crochet-with-wire-and-beads project! Do you like my necklace? [...]
Heading out to Pittsburgh!
Hey guys! I'm just about to leave for the Pittsburgh Knit and Crochet Festival! (literally... in 10 minutes, I just had to sneak in a blog post, first!) It's going to be an awesome weekend: there are awesome classes (I'm teaching three), vendors and special events. The organizer has put a huge emphasis on crochet this year, so it's going to rock! It's also my first time vending a booth [...]
WIP Wednesday: a multi-craftual week!
This week I've been SO multicraftual! In addition to my usual knitting and crocheting, I've been working on my metalsmithing (I'm in week 4 of a 6 week class) and I'm making my first attempt at crocheting with wire! Here's a peek at what I'm up to: Pagona Shawl, week 2 You saw this guy last week, but I've put in another week of knitting! The pattern seems a little tricky in the first few [...]
Tips for Making your Knitting/Crochet Patterns into Kits
Since I started selling amigurumi kits, I've gotten lots of questions from other designers about how to do it. And you know what multiple questions means, right? Blog post! Prepare your Patterns I started selling my patterns online as PDF downloads, which is fantastic because there's no page limit! However, if you're going to start printing your patterns to put into kits, you might need to make [...]
A peek into the process: designing a chicken!
A week ago, I received a commission to design a crocheted chicken. I LOVE custom orders (particularly from super-nice, non-control-freak customers!) because it's a chance for me to be creative in a direction I wouldn't ordinarily take. So... you wanna see how I design a crochet chicken? The first step was to find out what my customer had in mind ('chicken' can conjure up lots of different [...]
Does your business need Twitter?
There's a question I hear from crafty-business owners pretty consistently: Do I need to tweet/facebook/blog to be successful? So-and-so does it, so I think I should, too... Here are my tips for deciding whether a social networking site is right for you, and then how to go about it if you decide to. Is it right for you? You shouldn't feel obligated to tweet/facebook/blog/whatever just [...]