Tomorrow, June 14th, is World Wide Knit in Public Day (WWKIP). Events are being hosted at locations around the world! It is easy to participate, just take your needles and yarn and head outside. Many shops are hosting special events as well. To find an event near you, check out the official website by clicking here. I hope you will consider heading outdoors tomorrow and joining in the fun! If you do, I would love to hear about the event you attended.

        

As I have written before, I love freeform. For the last few years, the International Freeform Crochet Guild has done an annual project focused on a specific theme. This year the theme was "through our eyes," where guild members were challenged to interpret the theme in any needlework technique. Thirty-five members accepted the challenge and the results are truly amazing!

You can view the entire installation online by clicking here. Each participant also write a short piece about the inspiration behind their creation.

You can also see the past exhibits on the site as well. You will truly be amazed by the talent these fiber artists display! They are a real inspiration and am proud to call them my colleagues in fiber and my friends.

        

Fiber Artist Myra Wood recently published a book on freeform lace. While freeform can be intimidating at first, Myra provides great photos and clear information on how to get started with this unique art form! Myra agreed to sit down for an “e-interview” to talk about her new book and give some suggestions on how to freeform!

ALVB: When did you first get the idea for the book?
MW: I love books on needlearts and have every book I can find on creative crochet and freeform as well as tons of conventional stitch guides, pattern books and books on lace crochet.

I realized a few years ago that none of them really focused on freeform crochet lace. There are incredible books on creative crochet dating back to the 70s that I love but they didn’t addressed the openwork, lacy crochet I love so much. I figured someone had to write it!
 
ALVB: How long did you work on the designs shown in the book?
MW: I really wanted to present a wide range of projects using different sized hooks and yarns so I spent years developing different techniques that incorporated various traditional styles of crochet lace. The ideas for the 5 different styles of Creative Crochet Lace in the book germinated over a few years as I’d do new pieces and finally came together over a 2 year period. The nice thing about self publishing is that you can make your own deadlines and not rush the work. I also wanted to offer a good variety of styles and projects to show people the wide range of possibilities using these techniques.
 
ALVB: What is your favorite piece?
MW: Kinda like asking which is your favorite child! I have different favorites for different reasons but my favorite thing about each one is remembering the journey and the discovery that went along with making it. The wonderful thing about freeform is watching it evolve and discovering the fabric as you make it. It’s always an adventure!
 
ALVB: Why free form?
MW: I think, as fiber artists, we are very lucky to be able to express ourselves in so many incredibly different and unique ways. Just look at the range of artistry from the International Freeform Guild: http://www.intff.org. I actually love patterns and traditional crochet and knitting too but they’re very different from immersing yourself in discovering the fabric as you go along. Nothing speaks to me or allows me to express myself like freeform!

ALVB: What would you recommend for stitchers new to free form? How should they get started?
MW: First, join our list! The most amazing freeformers from all over the world including the top teachers and artists are all on the list and are willing to help anyone interested in getting started. We have an enormous amount of resources listed in our files and archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FFCrochet/. There are also wonderful books by Prudence Mapstone, Margaret Hubert and Jenny Dowde available on their websites and through Amazon along with some of the great out of print books from the 70s for inspiration. There’s a list in the files of all of the great ff books you can imagine. For inspiration you have to visit: James Walter’s site: http://www.crochet.nu/ and http://freeformcrochet.com. Prudence has a wealth of information on her site as well: http://www.knotjustknitting.com/. Click on What is Freeform to see an amazingly clear demo on scrumbling. She also has long list of links for all things freeform and beyond!! Bonnie Pierce also offers a wonderful tutorial on her site: http://www.elegantcrochet.com. Scroll down to Free Form and follow the links to the tutorial for making a follow along scrumble. I’ve added a tutorial to my site at: http://www.myrawood.com/pages/demo.html. That is an alternative method. The most important thing is to experiment, use lots of different wonderful yarns and have fun scrumbling!!

Thank you Myra for taking the time to tell us about your book and your perspective on freeform! If you would like to order Myra’s book, you can click on the widget above.

        

I have a very exciting announcement. My first design has been published! You can find it in the May/June issue of Quick & Easy Crochet and is called the "Great Granny Drawstring Purse." I can't tell you how excited I was to see my purse in the magazine. I hope this is my first design in a long line of creative ideas to share with others.

If you decide to pick up the magazine and try the pattern, I would love to hear how you like it.

        

Carol Sulcoski, Lisa Myers and Laura Grutzeck have recently published a great book called Knit So Fine. The book has plenty of great designs using lightweight yarns, which tend to get a bad reputation from both knitters and crocheters that they are slow to progress in your projects.

Well, Carol has agreed to be my "guest blogger" today and I am happy to have her! The following is a discussion we had about her book and her thoughts behind using "skinny yarns." So, take it away Carol!!!

First of all, a big thank you to Andrea Lyn for hosting me today, on the very first day of the Knit So Fine Skinny Yarns Blog Tour!

Today we’re going to look at Trekking XXL, a wool/nylon sock yarn that is made in Germany by Zitron (and distributed in the USA by the Skacel company). I’ve always loved Trekking for socks, but after I got a spinning wheel and began to experiment with plying yarns, I came to love Trekking even more. There are particular colorways of Trekking that create wonderful shaded color effects via the plies: each ply changes color in long lengths, at different rates and using different hues. You end up watching colors morph into each other and back again. I’m fascinated by these colorways.

After I started spinning, I came to better understand the color effects when I was plying together yarns that I had spun. I began to wonder what would happen if I knit two strands of Trekking together. I picked about five or six different colorways that all used this shaded effect and started knitting striped swatches with them. It was addictive (much in the way that self-stripers like Noro Kureyon are addictive – you can’t wait to see what color comes next).

Since layering pieces are in fashion, I decided to go with a very simple, classic v-neck vest.

I had so much fun making stripes (you had to change both strands at once at the end of the row, and start the next row with two different strands to get really distinct stripes) that I designed the vest with a striped front. But I also loved the way the yarn looked when you switched one strand randomly. So I designed a back panel that allows the knitter to randomly drop one strand and pick up another for an impressionistic blur of colors.

CS: Andrea Lyn, you did some crocheting with Trekking – what did you think?

ALVB: I have to tell you, I am always a little worried about using skinny yarns for exactly the same reasons as most stitchers, but I think I am becoming a convert! I especially liked Trekking XXL. The feel is incredibly soft and the colors are wonderfully vibrant! I especially liked that is is 75% wool, as I prefer to use natural-occuring fibers.

You told us how the yarn’s color effects inspired the vest in your book. Where else do you get for inspiration for designs from?

CS: All over! For example, my oldest son is ten, and he wears a lot of skateboarder-style shirts, like this one:

I thought how fun it would be to translate that idea – a T-shirt style top with faux layers – into an adult style. And that’s how the Skater T came about!

Sometimes a particular yarn gives me an idea, while other times I just play around with a style I like – like a yoke sweater or a raglan – and try to come up with a little twist to make it seem fresh.

ALVB: How do you/what is your process for selecting the specific yarn for a specific design?

CS: Sometimes the yarn will inspire the design – like the Drapey Silk Vest, which was a way to show off the gorgeous drape of a pure silk yarn. Sometimes I have a design in mind but not a particular yarn, so I look for a yarn that will fit in with my mind’s eye view of the design, paying attention to things like elasticity, warmth or coolness, colors available, gauge and so on. Every once in a while, I start to swatch or knit with a yarn and discover it doesn’t behave the way I need it to, so then I have to find an alternate. There’s a lot of trial and error involved.

ALVB: How long did you work on the project?

CS: We first proposed the book idea in mid-2006, and spent several months working on swatches, sketches and an outline. We began ordering yarn, designing and knitting in the fall of 2006, and that process continued until the summer of 2007. It seemed like so little time! But luckily we finished it up and we were pleasantly surprised when the finished book starting showing up on bookshelves a few weeks earlier than our projected publication date (which was June).

Thanks again, Andrea Lyn, for hosting the first leg of the Knit So Fine Blog Tour!
Tomorrow we’ll be visiting RosieBlogs (http://www.rosieblogs.blogspot.com), the blog of Rosie’s Yarn Cellar (http://www.rosiesyarncellar.com). My co-author Lisa R. Myers – who founded and owns Rosie’s – will be chatting with Courtney Kelley about another delectable fine yarn . . .

It was my pleasure hosting you Carol! You can order Carol's book from Amazon by clicking on the widget above!

        

If you aren't familiar with a relatively new online community called Ravelry, I highly recommend you check it out!

Ravelry is a great online location for you to meet other fans of fiber, check out and purchase the latest patterns and join discussion groups about various fiber-related topics. I have been a member for awhile now, but only recently started to delve deeper into all the features Ravelry contains.

I currently belong to 16 groups that cover everything from free form crochet to technical spinning to spool knitting. I have in just the last few days, I started to check out the online repository of patterns.

Site owners Jessica and Casey are doing a great job listening to the current users about suggestions and improvements and the community is growing daily!

In order to control stress on their servers, Jessica and Casey are extending invites in groups. Simply sign up for a user ID and you'll be connected as soon as they send out your invite. Trust me, it is worth the wait!

If you haven't checked it out yet, I suggest you log on. If you already have, I would love to hear your thoughts!

You can log on to Ravlery by clicking here.

        

This morning I was inspired by a segment my husband turned on for me on the Sunday Morning Show on CBS. They were talking about Karen Allen. We all know her as the lead actress in the Indiana Jones Movies and much earlier in Animal House.

Well, later in life, she went back to school, at FIT no less in 2002, to study machine knitting technology. She now has a wonderful line of sweaters, scarves, gloves and the like, as well as a shop in Barrington, MA.

After a terrible week at work and thinking at my age, where you are is where you are, Karen has given me new hope! My husband Glenn and I keep talking about a "plan." We need to take care of certain things at this point, taking care of our health benefits, sticking to a reasonable budget and so on. If we continue to stick to that plan, there might just be a "part two" to our lives where we can truly do our passion. For me, fiber arts. For Glenn, fly fishing.

So I say to all of you, don't feel stuck! Find your passion and make a plan! And look to Karen, a life-long knitter who has gone back to her love of fiber and re-invented it as her "part two" in life. She is most definitely my new hero!

You can see Karen's beautiful designs by clicking here.

        

Recently, an interesting question was posed on a discussion group I belong to. Why stash? As I am sure you all know, the stash is the all important, and ever growing, collection of fiber, yarn, fiber tools and the like. So, why do we stash? Why do we find new and unique ways to sneak yarn and fiber into the house past the husband? (By the way, my personal favorite way to sneak is to buy the yarn, toss the store bag and put it right into my crochet bag like it was always there.)

For me, it is the creative wonder of what that wonderfully-feeling yarn or fiber could become. I love buying one skein at a time and combining it into my freeform projects. If I really love the yarn, of course I have to go back and purchase enough for an entire project! One of my favorite things to do is wander a yarn shop and just feel all the skeins of yarn until I get what my husband refers to as "the oooh factor." That exact moment that you know you must purchase whatever yarn you are holding.

This is how the stash grows and grows. I even have a trunk my husband bought for me as a coffe table that is now filled with yarn on one side, fiber on the other side and spindles in the middle.

I would love to hear from some of you what your stash means to you and why you stash in the first place.

Stash on!

        

As you already know, I recently discovered the virtues of YouTube. Yes, there are actually useful videos to be found!

Recently, tapestry crochet designer and expert Carol Ventura recently posted a wonderful video on YouTube giving a step-by-step demonstration of the method. This video is very well done and I know you will learn a lot from it.

To watch and learn from this great video, click here. If you would like to see more of Carol's amazing work, you can go to her website: http://www.tapestrycrochet.com/.

        

I wanted to share a great site that can help with sculptural crochet! It is from SuperNaturale and I have to say this is going to be a great help to me when attempting some of the more tricky 3D shapes. This is a great site and I can't wait to fully explore it. Make sure you check out the baby octopus. Amazing!

I can't tell you how happy I am this site was passed along to me! I must thank my fellow freeformers, who passed on this site. They are true artists and I am proud to call many of them my friends.