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Crochet Booth 203 Finalized (Day 8 of 50)

Crochet Booth PAID IN FULL

Every year CGOA’s Chain Link conference has a market with knit and crochet booths, in addition to a full schedule of classes and special events. I’ve attended these conferences every year since 2002 (except in 2003). It’s always fun to walk the show floor between classes.

As a teacher now, I look forward to seeing what students bring back from the market during a class break. This is often how I first hear about something I need to go buy before it sells out! (I can imagine other teachers nodding their heads when they read this.)

Doris and I had our first crochet booth in this market last year. (The event is also known as the Knit and Crochet Show because it also includes the TKGA/knitting guild.) That was in San Diego; this July it will be in Charleston SC.

It’s Officially All Ours: Booth #203!

Today I finished paying for the DesigningVashti booth space—well before the late June deadline. I paid first half of the fee ($300) in April to get a great location. It’s also one of the few corner spaces. I love the location. People will be able to see our crochet booth from the entrance, and I’m going to enjoy being right across from Crochetville’s booth. Not will it be fun to be near Amy and Donna the whole time (like last year), the market opens with a strong crochet presence.

 

 

It’s Friday and this is my last businessy item to cross off for the week. This is also Day 8 of the epic 50 days I have left to get ready. I’ll be teaching five classes at CGOA‘s conference and have a crochet booth on the show floor.

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Simple Tunisian Lace Nets: Day 2 of 50

Tunisian extended stitches (Tes) crocheted into each row four different ways (Tefs, Teeks, front post etc)
Four of many simple ways to vary a Tunisian net lace.

Class Handout Progress: Steeking Tunisian Lace

The graphic above completes a section of the Steeking Tunisian Lace class handout. The base stitch is Tunisian Extended Stitch, or Tes. This chameleon-like stitch has other names and many variations (discussed in newsletter #49). It’s versatile, slightly odd, and one of my favorites, so I’m delighted to teach this class topic for the CGOA conference.

These four swatches contrast some of the simplest variations of this Tunisian lace net.

“Teeks” stands for Tunisian knit stitch extended twice. Easier to say than Tkse².

I’m also creating a graphic of fancier variations of these nets for comparison (and inspiration!). Have a look at this ripple variation! And I love these two-color versions.

I plan to pin them to my Pinterest boards like when I swatched and pinned a slew of star stitch variations a few years ago.

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Color Pooling Crochet Stitch Games-Class

Planned vs. Accidental Color “Pooling”

 

2016 collage for "Stitch Games" CGOA class
This is the 2016 class web-poster at the CGOA event headquarters.

Last summer’s Get Your Geek On CGOA event inspired my new three-hour crochet class in Charleston SC (July 13, 2016); some new booklets and patterns too. Many of us have sought insight into using hand-painted yarns. These yarns are often boldly variegated with short color changes and other indie dyeing methods. Color pooling is exciting!

You’re looking at stitch game projects I designed from 2009 to a month ago. (There are more but they don’t all fit in this image.) Pattern for the vivid blue striped scarf (Jempool) releases this week.

Use crochet stitches to turn the color volume up or down (or both, selectively!). Exaggerate the element of chance: accidental pooling. Or, eliminate it: planned pooling.

What’s Color Pooling?

Variegated (multi-colored) yarns seem to have randomly and evenly mixed colors in one skein. It’s like a party in a ball…unless the colors stop looking well-blended when crocheted or knitted. A color might repeat too often, or pile (pool) up on itself row after row in a blotchy way. That’s pooling in a bad way.

Texture pooling is a variation of color pooling. Ever use a yarn with dramatic thick and thin areas, and find that these texture contrasts clump together awkwardly? The texture changes are pooling. That also happened with the intermittent tinsel sections of an expensive mohair yarn. I thought it would look magical! Instead, the tinsel just looked lumpy and stiff when I crocheted it.

Sprinkling Love Knots among simple double crochets {UK: tr} retained the otherworldly look of the yarn by giving the tinsel more room. The result was Marisa Artwalk, an exhilarating discovery.

“Stitch Pooling” Makes Color Pooling a Game

Lcustrine Cowl, Tea Lights, and Bare Bones scarves.
The three patterns in the Crochet to the Colors Playbook. This is simple stitch pooling that alters color pooling.

A simple stitch game I like, especially with crochet, is what I call stitch pooling. I switch to a contrasting crochet stitch when a certain color comes up as I crochet. Knitters do this when they switch from stockinette to garter whenever a certain color comes up, for example. Crochet gives us so many texture choices for creating a simple game, or a wildly challenging one! You can heighten or de-emphasize colors too. This is accidental color pooling that’s fresh, interesting, and each result is unique. Just use familiar crochet stitches.

Pictured at right are three examples of beginner-level stitch games in a pattern booklet.

Color Pooling According to Plan

Eliminate chance and you get regular coordinated patterns of color. The game here is to identify the unique color code of a variegated yarn. You decide where they show up in your project. (See my newsletter issue #77, Find the Color Code of Short Striping Yarns.) Then, choose the crochet stitch, gauge, and number of stitches to get the color patterning you want.

To see when this class is offered next, check the Upcoming Classes & Events page. It’s updated regularly.

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Designing Vashti Show Booth: It Was So Fun!

See gallery below. Here’s what July was all about: planning for my first Designing Vashti show booth. Then building it. Then meeting lots of people! Then breaking it down.

My regular blogging, newslettering, and crochet designing resumes as soon as I finish recovering from that big adventure!

Click each photo for full view.

The Event:

The Knit and Crochet Show (a.k.a. the annual Chain Link Conference of the Crochet Guild of America/CGOA), July 22–25 2015. This year in was in San Diego CA.

Want to know about the 2016 show? July 13–16 in Charleston, South Carolina. Why YES, I’ll be there!! So will the DesigningVashti booth!

For more information: CGOA website or the Knit and Crochet Show site.

Have a look at a creative way to repurpose the metal grid panels you see in the photos.

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Introducing: Vashti’s How to Crochet Book!

Crochet chain stitches in different colors, combined to look like a cabled braid. Full size: https://www.flickr.com/gp/vashtirama/2c5494
A compound braid of simple crochet stitches. View full size.

I invite you to join me as I try an experiment: what is it like to write an in-depth crochet book, post by post, right here on this blog?

I’m excited to show you what I’ve come up with! The working title is Vashti’s How to Crochet Book. I don’t see it as being a typical how-to-crochet guide.

My vision for it is that it goes step by step, more deeply and thoroughly than any other I know of. (I’ve read a hundred or so.) It’s for beginning crocheters and the rest of us. It could even be for aliens. Surely there’s an extraterrestrial who’s trying to learn how to crochet.

What’s the Rush?

Sometimes I feel kind of rushed along when reading about how to crochet basic stitches. I have lots of why questions, including why do I feel rushed? Rushed toward what? taller stitches? Finished projects? Maybe it’s just that no book can be big enough for what is really going on with crochet loops.

New to Crocheting?

May this be the place for beginners to get solid answers to how to crochet at each step. Stuck at the beginner level? Surely there’s a way to explain things that finally clears up confusion. Here’s an example: I’ve noticed that crochet relies on simple terms like loop or chain that actually have multiple meanings. This can confuse some folks when they’re not spelled out. Please let me know in the comments how I can do even better.

If you already own a crochet how-to book, great! Some of them are designed to be sweet portable project companions. Come back here to fill in the gaps, answer your why questions, or just to see if a different point of view enriches your understanding.

Know How to Crochet Already?

This book is for us too. What can be said about the most basic elements of crochet that’s worth saying AND hasn’t already been said? As it turns out, a lot in my humble opinion. I keep discovering important things about crochet when I take nothing for granted. What I find about the chain stitch alone could fill a small book. (As you probably know, crochet books typically devote about a page to it.)

Can’t Know Too Much!

Knowing what’s in the usual how to crochet book won’t make any of us crochet experts. Crochet is too big to fit in a book; it’s even too big for one person to master 100% of it! Another way I think of it is, every crocheter is a beginner at some part of crochet. This is why I see the standard crochet skill levels as more of a spiral than ranked levels.

Why I Want to Blog This

  • A how to crochet book has not yet been blogged and I can’t resist a good experiment.
  • A blog allows me all the room I need. It’s ambitious. To avoid getting overwhelmed, I’m blogging a section at a time. This first section is all about initial fundamentals, which are often taken for granted the most.
  • I want to write crochet books and not disappear from my online crochet communities while I do so. This way the book gets written publicly. I also want it to be interactive. Please leave comments!

Other Book Titles I’ve Considered

Secret Lives of the Great Crochet Stitches (because when I gave the Chain Stitch room to speak, it did…)

How to Crochet Like a Geek (because geeks love to get granular instead of skipping the juicy stuff. I found kindred crochet spirits in CGOA’s crochet geek seminar last year.)

How to Crochet: Vashti’s Missing Manual (So much is missing in the official crochet how-to books.)

Vashti’s Deluxe How to Crochet Guide (This is my ultimate way to celebrate my beloved art and hobby.)

This page was updated November 2018. It’s the first post of an experimental blog post series: Vashti’s How to Crochet Book. Next post: Why I’d Want to Learn How to Crochet.