Homemade - Do you? Don't you?

Over the weekend I had a very interesting comment on one of my posts on my private Facebook account.

My post was about a conversation I had had with a lady I met in the village, which went like this.....

Q - what do you do?
A - I'm a free lance designer
Q - what do you design?
A - crochet blankets
Q - do you sell the blankets?
A - no, I sell the patterns
Q - what you mean you actually design the blankets yourself!!
A - (in my head) - REALLY!!!!! 😖

There were a few more comments and then I added....

I've also had customers at shows asking "did you make that?" and when I say yes, they're really shocked and surprised
I'm not sure who they thought had actually made it, maybe I should ask next time....

My friend and neighbour Caroline (who runs a lovely B & B in Lynton, if you are coming to visit Lynton make sure to check her out at Lee House :-) commented that it might have something to do with people being removed from creating due to being able to buy everything they need cheaply.
I realise it doesn't apply to knitters and crocheters, but maybe it does, hence this post/comment/question.

I've always assumed everyone made home-made things, I guess due to the fact its something I grew up with and have done my whole life.
My mother and aunt have/had always made all their clothes, as a child I can remember shop bought clothes being a luxury and being allowed to buy a pair of trousers from an actual shop as a birthday treat was something really exciting.
My granny knitted and crocheted and made everything including carpets for her house, my granddad was an upholsterer, had an attic room full of bolts of fabric and owned about 5 or 6 sewing machines, he also had an allotment.
My grandparents brought up three children during the war years and so homemade was part of life.
My dad built several of his own boats, including his first yacht.
There was home grown fruit and veg, birthday cakes, jam and chutney and home made wine etc etc etc
My parents weren't destitute, its just the way it was and it meant they could take me on camping trips around Europe every year and spend my summers sailing.

I've always assumed everyone of my age had a home made life, Caroline's comment made me step back and reassess my assumption and to think about the people who didn't and don't.
I'm beginning to understand that being able to do homemade is something really special now and this is the reason behind all the really popular sewing, cake making, gardening, crafty tv programmes, I've always struggled to understand why they are so popular, surely everyone knows how to make a dress, grow new potato's and bake a cake?
I had several childhood friends whose mothers didn't own sewing machines or knit/crochet or make their own jam and I guess these are the people whose children a generation later have no idea how to do home made, but are eager to learn and make for their own children.

So just I'm just wondering.......... did you? do you do home made?
Or have you had to learn the skills as an adult because there was no one to teach you as a child?

Yarndale 2015 & panic

Good morning world from a gloomy damp Exmoor.

I feel really sorry for the tourists, especially the campers, but they did have sun for a few hours yesterday afternoon so its not all bad :-)

YARNDALE 2015 is a month away.

Thanks to Attic 24, (Lucy is one of the original organisers and attracts crocheters from all over the globe) Yarndale has become the only UK yarn show that focuses on crochet.
There will be all the normal suspects :-) - indie dyers, spinners, knitting designers, yarn brands, shops etc etc, but there wll also be a lot of crochet designers and crochet related stands.

It will be a momentous show for me as its going to my first show as a full time designer, not only is it my first show as a designer, but its also the first show that I will be flying solo and I'm beginning to panic.
I have no idea what to expect, what am I going to sell? is anyone going to know who I am? will anybody come and see me? will I be busy? or will I spend the whole show sitting in a corner quietly crocheting? and will the Beast behave and manage to get me to Yorkshire without any problems in the first place?
I really don't know the answer to any of these questions.

I've done yarn shows with NDS for about 10 years, but my designs have always just been pattern support for the yarn, over the years the NDS stand had developed into a very professional looking stand.
Its going to be difficult for me to produce a comparable crochet stand.
For one thing I won't be able to take all the grids as they are too long for the Beast and I don't want to hire a trailer, even though the Beast is built for towing the last 2 times I hired a trailer it had a big tantrum and broke down.
I might manage to persuade John Arbon to squeeze a couple of them into his van, but only enough to hang 2 or 3 blankets.

Secondly I don't have much of a product to sell.
So far I have a box of crochet hooks and a box of "Madder Triangles" that I discovered hidden away in the cellar, I thought the book had sold out, but it turns out that there are still a few left.
I will also have some Knit by Numbers DK, which is yarn support for Kissing Kaffe and Harlequin.
And I'm planning on raiding my stash for what's left of my NDS yarn as I can't really use it in my designs any more due to it being discontinued.

The only thing I am certain about is which blankets to take......

 Harelquin, Kissing Kaffe and Kaleidoscope for the 3 side walls.

Cornucopia for the table 

& maybe one or two blankets from "Madder Triangles" to cover up the rest of the table.

I need to stop dithering and panicking and just get on with it before I run out of time :-)
Wish me luck!

Harlequin

My second blog post is about Harlequin.
Which is the blanket I decided to make to see how quickly I could make a blanket.
The blanket took me 3 weeks to make from a pile of skeins to published pattern ...phew...
I have already blogged about the first week of Harlequin, so here are week's 2 and 3.

Week 2
I spent the whole week crocheting like a mad woman and being good and sewing in my ends as I went :-)
I finished making the blanket on Thursday (or it may have been Wednesday)

    

    

And week 3
I wrote the pattern, took the photo's and published the pattern yesterday :-)
You can find it on Ravelry HERE
And on Etsy HERE

Summer CAL - Part 2 & 3

Oooops - I was trying to blog at the beginning of each week, but I have slipped a bit.
So there will be 2 blog posts this morning to explain why I have been a bad blogger.

This one is about the Love Crochet Summer CAL

Since the last time I blogged the Summer CAL took over the whole of my life.
I was completely obsessed, spending all my waking time in the CAL Facebook group encouraging and answering questions and as there are nearly 2000 ladies crocheting along it meant an awful lot of questions and encouraging, plus all the e-mails and private messages.
I made the decision to step away, as I have a book to write and other patterns to publish.
So I un-joined the group, but am still trying to check in every day to see how every one is doing and "like" all your beautiful projects.
I'm quite sad about leaving the CAL group as I have always been involved with my customers and like to be able to help in anyway that I can.
And even sadder at the fact that I didn't even say goodbye, but saying good bye would of generated far too many comments and answers that I would struggle to keep up with.
I hope the nearly 2000 ladies will forgive me :-)

Incidentally one of the questions I have noticed while lurking is coming up time and time again, it is "What colour border should be used to join the squares together?"
The answer is there isn't one, the squares should be joined to each other, so the colours flow.
However if you have already started joining with a colour please don't worry, its your blanket and is adding a border makes you happy then its perfectly fine :-)

Since I last blogged 4 more square patterns have been published on the Love Crochet Blog
And here they are.....

 Violet

 Lilac

 Barbie

Fuschia

Happy Crocheting

love Amanda