Crafting 365 - Day 56:thomcatdesigns

Check out Cme member craftnerd's Super Mario Bros. blanket-in-progress (as found on our forum). I hear the doot-doot-doot song in my head just looking at it! She made a Space Invaders purse, too!

As for the second part of my title, I stumbled onto this write-up about the Granny Peace Brigade's knitting protest in New York City. Many of us get together with other stitchers to schmooze and crochet or knit. We do it for the fun and camaraderie, but I'm intrigued by the idea of a third variable to bring stitchers together. Are any of you involved in a group that stitches together for a reason, be it love of literature, charity stitching, activism, sci-fi fandom, etc.?

A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of talking to Marly of the YarnThing podcast. She brought up several topics including what I'm looking to accomplish through Interweave Crochet, how the submission process works, CrochetMe.com, and more. If you have 45 minutes to spare, have a listen (you don't need an iPod). If questions pop up, ask over on the IC blog and I'll do my best to answer. I hope to talk to Marly more in the future.

[x-posted at Interweave Crochet]

Tags: YarnThing, podcast, interview

I'm unplugging for the weekend! It doesn't happen often, and I'm looking forward to it (with, you know, that kind of gnawing trepidation that precedes such things).

To honour the event, a question for you. Leave a comment with the following info: What's the last project you completed? What are you working on now? What's up next?

The last project I completed is for something I'll blog about when the spring issue of the magazine comes out in a couple of weeks:

In an attempt for instant gratification, I'm currently knitting a superchunky wee sweater from the Anthropologie-inspired Capelet pattern (though it's not a capelet). I love this colour! I'm thinking I might finish it during this unplugged weekend...

And next. Mmm. Next. Likely something crocheted. But what? It would figure that I'd ask a question I can't yet answer myself. Hmph.

So. What're you working on?

UPDATE: The preview of the Spring 2008 Interweave Crochet is up. I hope you enjoy!

Kids, I missed CrochetMe.com's fourth birthday! It was two weeks ago. Happy birthday to us!

Also, I'm over a third-of-a-month tardy in shouting out National Crochet Month. Doing anything special to celebrate or promote crochet this month? There's a giant hoo-ha going on at the NatCroMo group on Ravelry.

It's always exciting to see crochet covered in the mainstream media. And though it's not the best writing the New York Times can offer, this article about the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef project is awesome.

I've been surprised over the last year to read occasionally about people's confusion when beginning to make squares for the Babette Blanket. After overcoming my assumption that the squares are super simple, I did a demo on how to make them at the Knit Out & Crochet Too. I blogged about it at the magazine, and hope my drawn-on images don't do more harm than good (Skitch is so cool, I don't know when to stop).

Moving on to very-well-done images, Sister Diane recently posted a great tutorial on How to Crochet a Wire Flower Pendant [via Craft].

Finally, today is my sixth wedding anniversary. In a sea of magazine submissions, copy editing, and tech editing (with an added sea of marking, homework, and studying), the Mr and I are doing our best to carve out good time to celebrate. A wildly expensive night out is planned!

I'll believe it when I see it (or, more realistically, when people tell me about it), but it looks like Microsoft will make the next version of their dreadful web browser web-standards compliant. That's right, Internet Explorer 8 is going to play nice. So they say.

I'm writing about this here because 67% of you still use IE. And because you use IE, this site looks worse for you than it does for other people. That's because I refused to jump through the required hoops to make the site play nice with IE's unique quirks. If I'd been hired by someone to make them a website, I couldn't get away with that. But I decided to do it anyway here because there are better browsers out there than IE, and I frankly didn't have the time for the hoop jumping. (I reiterate my age-old suggestion that you switch to Firefox.) As things stand for the 33% of you using other browsers, I still have a lot of work to do beautifying the site. But now at least the majority of you will see some improvement when IE8 comes out, without me having to do anything. Sweet.

(I have no idea when IE8 is slated for release. So, you know, file this info for sometime down the line. And do consider switching, eh?) 

Ok, so it's not a huge number of links. But they're good ones.

Wishing it were Saturday already (heh), our favourite admirer of the day wrote quite nicely about crochet on her blog. From there, I discovered that none other than the Yarn Harlot recently wrote about how crochet can be used to help stabilize knitwear. I'm often asked why a crochet design is worked in a seemingly roundabout way, and I like explaining the clever ways designers have of solving pesky problems with stretch, structure, and shaping. As a knitter, though, these things often remain a mystery to me, and I learned a lot from Stephanie's post.

Moving on from my glee from reading great pieces on crochet, I'm excited for the Fibrefest next weekend in Abbotsford, BC. I don't yet know which day I'll attend, but it should be great fun. (Say it with me now, I will not touch a loom. I will not touch a loom.) And speaking of local goodness, check out this great CBC piece on Birkeland Bros. Wool shop. They show the hundred-year-old carding machine in action!

Aaaand, that's what I've got this day that comes only once every four years. Enjoy it!

At long last, dear readers, I'm ready to blog all about my recent travels. I was delayed a bit by my aforementioned food poisoning and going to press on the spring issue of the magazine (the former did not make the latter very easy for my colleagues, I tell you. When the editor comes to town to make going to press more efficient, it defeats the purpose when said editor is unable to eat solid food for three days. I love the people I work with. They are infinitely patient.) Ok. Onward!

At the Mall of America for the Knit Out & Crochet Too, I bumped into the lovely ladies of the Lion Brand Yarn Craft podcast in their booth (Cecily was there!), and chatted with them for a few minutes. They put a handy minute-by-minute guide to the episode at the end of their post, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't listen to the whole thing. Vickie Howell caught me on video in the Interweave booth. I wore my Icelandic Turtleneck, baby. Vickie and Annie Modesitt together are entertaining. Evidence:

Ok. The MOA, people! It is huge. It is absurdly MALL. The Interweave booth was sandwiched between Baby Gap and the Apple Store (I met a MacBook Air. It's sloped like a Mint Milano cookie. Yum). Gotta say, I've never had more fun in a mall. Not even as a suburban teenager. There were crocheters and knitters everywhere. So many that it seemed totally normal to walk around chatting non-stop with perfect strangers at loud volume about yarn. It's like the civilians didn't exist. (Hm. Maybe it was more like being a suburban teenager than I'd thought.) It was awesome.

I met Dawn for the first time in person, which was as much fun as I'd ever hoped. That we spent a couple of lovely and truly hilarious meals with skydramini and none other than Bubbo and her pants was icing on the cake. Here they are (Bubbo won a knitting machine, thus ensuring she'll never have to pick up needles, ever):

I had a busy day in the mall. I gave a demo on how to make the double crochet granny squares that make up the Babette Blanket (more on that another time), I emceed the children's fashion show (so cute! I talked about it on the Yarn Craft podcast), I sat on an author's panel and then signed copies of Crochet Me. It was really exciting to meet so many people who love the book and the site. I also met a couple of designers I've worked with on the magazine, which was a delightful surprise.

There was a gorgeous Infinity Wrap at the TNNA booth. It was made with Noro yarn (I think it was Silk Garden) and was simply beautiful.

Ok. This is a long post! I'll sum up: The KO&CT event rocked, even though I got terribly sick on the airplane on my way to Colorado. Look for the spring issue of the magazine at the beginning of April!

I'll leave you with a photo from this past weekend, when I had to be in Colorado but didn't have to do much work. Eunny was there, too, and we went to Rocky Mountain National Park. We saw many elk.

Technorati Tags: knit out and crochet too, mall of america, interweave crochet

Greetings from Colorado, where I'm trying my hardest to think straight after being sicker than I've ever been. On my newly sophisticated diet of Gatorade, chicken soup, and tea, I'm plugging along preparing the spring issue for press.

All this is, of course, unrelated to the pesky downage we've experienced here at CrochetMe.com. (Unless we choose to consider its cause to be tied in with the evil forces that brought on the food poisoning. In which case, I disclaim karmic responsibility.) It looks like things have finally been fixed (fingers crossed). Thank you for your patience!

More soon, when I'm back up to full speed and the issue is on its way to the printer.