Crochet design

One of the ladies in my Ravelry group has been asking about crochet design classes.
I've told her I don't think there are any, as I've never heard of any, but I could be wrong.
Its got me thinking about crochet design in general.
.
I spend a lot of time on Ravelry looking at projects and patterns and have come to the conclusion that crochet design is about 10 years behind knitting design.
About 80% of crochet projects are made with cheap acrylic and feature the long time favourite granny square.
Please don't think I am anti granny squares as all crocheters and designers need to start somewhere and its a very simple motif, easy to make and perfect for beginners.
I'm not even anti acrylic even though I hate it and wouldn't use it myself, I understand that a lot of people can't afford more expensive yarn, especially if its for a blanket.
Plus a lot of beginners don't want to invest in expensive yarn only to find out they don't like crochet or find they can't do it.

My first blanket design was Bessies Blanket and was made with granny squares.
Bessie was a huge success, mainly because of the way the colours worked together. the success lead me to experiment and I haven't stopped experimenting since.

As I began to understand how crochet motifs worked my designs became more complicated and I decided it was my mission to change the way crocheters thought, gently persuade them to move forward from the granny and try something more complex.
So I wrote this

"My personal crusade is to make crochet motif’s sexy & desirable.

They normally have a bad reputation, ever noticed the un-loved granny square blankets lurking in the depths of many charity shops? 

The motifs deserve a bit more respect and love, hence my crusade!"

In the last year or so I have realised that I am trying to swim against the tide and being arrogant to think I can change the crochet world.

A big perecntage of the crochet world is happy where it is and doesn't want to change and if it makes them happy I shouldn't presume that I know better.

I have stepped away from my crusade, gone back to using a very simple motif and decided to concentrate on colour instead. After all its the thing that inspires me the most, being a dyer means I can dye the colours I need. 

You might of noticed NDS's colour range is based around the rainbow, very selfishly I've created my own palette :-)

Anyway going back to crochet design.

The remaining 20% of crocheter's/designers are moving forwards and making more and exciting designs.

For example if you search Crochet Shawl in the Ravelry patterns you will find some absolutely beautiful designs.

There are some incredibly talented designers, have a look at their profiles most of them started off with something simple like scarves and have developed over time.

I'll leave the crusade to them as they are doing a lot better job than I was and carry on indulging myself.

So my advice to my dear Ravelry lady is to start off slowly, don't run before you can walk.

Experiment and take time to develop your own style.

And good luck, I look forward to watching your progress.

Florence/Myrtle - Madder Triangles

I've spent all afternoon on Photoshop working on some Myrtle blanket designs for my Madder Triangle book.
I'm working on star designs, some of them are totally mental and I'm not sure if I'll be able to explain them as a pattern.
Trying to work out how I'd write the patterns has made me think about how I'm going to write the pattern for Florence.
I thought I'd already blogged about Florence/Myrtle, but I can't find the post so maybe I haven't.

Florence was made for baby Florence as a baby blanket.
The working name was Myrtle as that's what she was called before she was born.
Florence is not typical baby colours as baby Florence's mum doesn't like pastels or pink, plus I only work with my colours and even though some of them can be very subtle I don't think of them as pastel.
Myrtle will be the name of the second star blanket

So here are a few Florence photo's, including a photo of her and her mum and dad when she was a few days old.
I'll be blogging lots more about the blankets later, for now I have to get to the post office before it closes.

Desirable Crochet Motifs, Volume 2, 2010 to 2012

Drum roll please.........

I have just published Desirable Crochet Motifs, Volume 2, 2010 to 2012 as an e-book on RAVELRY and the WEBSITE.

Its been a lot longer coming than I had hoped, too many other things like dyeing and doing shows got in the way.
I am planning to do volume 3, its kind of half finished already.
I'm not sure whether to get it published asap while I finish working on the designs for "Madder Triangles" or to wait until next year.
But I have decided I am going to try and put all 3 motif books together in one big collection later on next year.
It will be more expensive and take a lot of editing to get it down to a publishable size, but I think it will be worth it and probably will only be available as a hard copy.

Ophans and Odd Boy Sale

I've decided to discontinue NDS's Yarn of the Week.

We have about 18 different yarn bases and every week I struggle to work out which one to feature.
Some we only dye occasionally like Precious and Angel DK, they are both occasional sellers, we keep them in the range as we like them, rather than because you want them.
If we are doing a big wholesale dye run we tend to order more than we need of the yarns we are dyeing and dye the extra as retail.
For example we have been dyeing tons of Dazzling wholesale recently, so we have had tons of Dazzling retail.
But we haven't had any Dazzle 4 Ply/sock for wholesale, so we haven't dyed any for retail, so the retail box  is empty.
This limits my choice of Yarn of the Week and I end up featuring the same yarn in week after week.

So I have decided to change it to a Ophans and Odd Boys Sale.

Before I tell you more I will explain that we think of all our skeins as boy's, (even the pink ones :-)
And we dye all our yarn in 500 gm skeins (5 skeins tied together), so there will always be at least 5 skeins of each dye lot.

The orphans are self explanatory, they are the single skeins left over when all their brothers have been sold.
And the Odd Boys are skeins that don't fit in with their brothers.
Sometimes the dye hasn't completely dissolved and 1 skein picks up the excess or sometimes 1 skein hasn't soaked up the dye as well as the others. And when they are wound and sitting on the table in their set waiting to be labelled, it stands out from the others like a sore thunb.

Each week I will add more Orphans to the page (the Odd Boys will be added when we have some) and keep them hidden until the Thursday night update, so each week you will need to check the page to see what is new in the sale.
The Orphans and Odd Boy skeins will cover our whole range and will all be reduced by £3 a skein, so there will be lots of bargins to be had.

The first batch will be revealed tomorrow night, when the Yarn of the Week page magically transforms into Orphans and Odd Boys.