Annie, from one of recent classes at Fibre Space, just posted on my Tinking Turtle’s Facebook page. She’s finished her cow! Isn’t it great?
I love the use of bright colors, and the cute eyes she made. Her stitches are so even too!
Got pictures of projects from one of the classes I’ve taught? I’d love to see them.
A few weeks ago I taught a beginning crochet class at Woolwinders. I love teaching beginning crochet. It goes back to one of my core beliefs about my business and the world. I believe that people are compelled to create; to make beautiful things. When I teach someone how to crochet, knit or anything else, I’m teaching them how to create in some small way.
Valerie’s email was a bright spot in my inbox when I got it the other day. She wanted to show me the finished cow she made from a Fresh Stitches Pattern, Jackie the Cow. Take a look at her work! If you didn’t know she had just learned to crochet a few weeks ago, I’d think she was an old hand. I love the jaunty tilt to the grey ear, and the placement of the spots.
Do you have a project from a class you took with me, or a pattern published by Tinking Turtle? Please, email me! I’d love to show it off on the blog.
Are you interested in taking a beginning crochet class? Woolwinders is offering a deal right now for a combination Beginning Crochet and Reading Charts and Patterns classes. Go to their website to find out!
Stacey Trock is one of my crochet heroines. I think her crochet animals are really cute – but what I admire even more than her design sense is her business model and brand. She is really great at making quality: be it posts on her blog, patterns, or items she sells by commission. Everything she does is well thought out and through.
So a couple of weeks back when Stacey asked for blog submissions for her blog, I put on my big girl pants, screwed up my courage and overcame my fangirlsquee and emailed her. She was very kind, and accepted two of my blog proposals.
I meant to post about it the day it came out, but I’ve been under the weather, barely able to do the things that keep things running around here.
So anyway, I’m telling you about it now. The other day I was over at Stacey’s blog talking about Barberpole Striping (or Helix Striping) in crochet. It’s a fun little tutorial, and as soon as I get my lightbox fully built, I hope to follow up with a series of video tutorials.
I realized that I had never gotten pictures of the Christmas gifts I made for everyone up – I had to keep them a secret because well… I wanted them to be a surprise.
Rosemary, my sister, this year got a crochet Hedwig. I’ll quote my notes from my Ravelry project page directly, because I think it says my thoughts about the project well:
Heavily modified Nelson the Owl from Fresh Stitches, almost so that I wouldn’t call it the same pattern.
Different stitch count on body (made body taller and less squat), different stitch count on head, I didn’t do the color changes, sized up the wings, improvised my own feet so that there were toes, no ears, made eyes slightly different. Basically, only thing not changed was the nose. Changed the colors to reflect a snowy owl, made body white, didn’t do the color changes on the belly, embroidered little “ends of feathers” onto body after crocheting, made an improvised set of feet with bobbles turned inside out.
I still think Hedwig looks funny without ear tufts, but since snowy owls don’t really have ear tufts, that’s fine. She reads as a snowy owl, so I guess that’s all that is needed.
Rosemary was happy with it, and all told the project probably only took me at most, probably 5 or 6 hours all told. And that was mostly because I was being fiddly with things, and ripped back a few times to adjust. I also was fiddly with the seaming, so that took longer. I still think it came out crooked, but don’t tell my sister that – Rosemary has a “thing” about objects being symmetrical and I already had to convince her the eyes really WERE the same size.
I don’t know about anyone else, but the holidays are taking their toll. It seems like a confluence of tasks for planning the wedding, plus general Christmas preparations has left me with very little brain to spare.
Last weekend I had a class at The Yarn Spot teaching students to crochet stuffed animals. The class used three of Fresh Stitches patterns: the brontosaurus, the cow, the turkey and the owl. Out of a class of four, two chose the brontosaurus, one the owl and one the cow. I brought a half-finished cow to the class so everyone could see the different techniques I was teaching.
I tried to get a picture of the half-finshed cow, but I had a day where I couldn’t seem to take a decent picture. There was always either a thumb or cat in the picture. The best I could do was this:
I’ve been working hard in the background on some neat developments. I hope to be able to announce them before the end of the year – but we’ll see.
Anyhoo, the cow has gotten me on a crochet kick, and I’ve got some cute little stuffed animals planned for various people over Christmas. I also have a deadline four days before Christmas, so we’ll see how that goes. *Wince*
How are you preparing for the New Year?
