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Best Crochet Conference Shoes Ever

Updated August 7, 2020. First posted June 20, 2016.

Having attended twenty-five crochet conferences in twelve years as of 2016, I’ve found that a lot depends on my weird, favorite conference shoes. Tomorrow’s post will be about the clothes, which are partly determined by the shoes.

Conference shoes I've worn: Z-Coils, torture heels, sleek boots.
Left: Mary Jane Z-Coils (best picture I have of them). I remember being on my feet all day; this was the Buffalo Chain Link. Middle: painful high heels that I reserve for the banquet fashion shows. Here, I’m modeling member Urmie Seenarine’s kick-pleated skirt.
Right: Sleek boots. Pretty comfortable but a commitment! They’re big and heavy in luggage.

I get asked about my choice of shoes a lot. (In the future I can just refer people to this post.) I wear one ultra-comfortable pair of Z-Coils all day, and maybe fancy heels or sandals for evening. This year I’ll have a new pair of Z-Coils, the “Z-Breeze” with an enclosed heel. (That link goes to the Z-Breeze style without a cover on the heel coil. Below is how the covered heel option looks.)

I can go all out and wear sensationally uncomfortable shoes for only two hours at a time. I love fabulous-looking shoes, but I stop having fun after about two hours of wearing them if they’re uncomfortable.

Another way to say this is, I have an insane amount of fun at these conferences when I wear Z-Coils most of the time. I’m on my feet most of every day. Shoes make or break events like these.

What is this Z-Coil Sorcery?

After a month or two of wearing my first pair (the non-conference gray clog style shown below), my lower back strengthened. The shoe’s coiled heel took over the job of shock absorber. It was a revelation that my lower back had been my “shock absorber” whenever I walked on tiles and pavement, or lifted heavy things. (For other people it might be their knees, ankles, or thighs.) I could lift almost double the weight than I could before, without problems.

3 Z-Coil Styles I've owned: grey suede clog, black Mary Janes, the Z-Breeze
I wore my 1st pair, the casual gray suede clogs, around the house and fell in love. Then wore the black leather Mary Janes at conferences until they wore out. Now to do the same with the Z-Breeze (bottom).

It turns out that I have good upper body strength. It was my lower back that was limiting it.

Some people only find out about Z-Coils when they develop walking difficulties. In my case, I met a local knitter who first wore them while recovering from a knee operation. Hers looked like thick white sneakers.

She loved them so much that she continued to wear them long after. I liked how weirdly futuristic the heel looked. When I tried on a pair I was hooked! This was about ten years ago.

[Need I do a disclaimer that I’m not a doctor? Not only am I not a doctor, my lower back has never been examined by one. And while I’m disclaiming, I’m also not a representative of the Z-Coil co. and they’re not rewarding me for blogging this.]

At crochet conferences I can stand on my feet all day every day while teaching or in my market booth, and carry stuff back and forth from my hotel room to the far end of a convention center.

I can also opt to wear painful-but-pretty dress shoes in the evening, and not feel like I’m paying a price for it the next day. The Z-Coils fix that.

Long Flights

Living where I do, I’ve had to take planes to 98% of all conferences I’ve attended. I never take long flights without Z-Coils. These conference shoes come through for me even before I arrive at the event. I don’t start the conference already exhausted from carrying luggage and dashing through airports to change planes at weird hours.

By the second and third days of a conference, other people’s legs and backs are tired. They look around constantly for somewhere to sit. It’s thanks to Z-Coils that I’m looking around for a place to go dancing instead! (Doris is rolling her eyes right about now.)

[I’m adding this link to Pia Thadani’s blog post about her first time attending this conference last year. Her pointers and photos convey everything very well.]

These are significant benefits, right? Now magnify them when I don’t get enough sleep. What if I have to sleep in the airport and switch planes at 5 am? My Z-Coils “have my back”—literally. It’s such a relief to rely on their strength when travel mishaps occur.

Two Big Drawbacks

One is that I don’t feel hot in them (as in sexy). Skirts are out of the question with Z-Coils for me. Some women can make it work, but I’d always feel self conscious.

The other drawback is that Z-Coil shoes are expensive (+/- $250.) Mine have been lasting me ten years, though! Plus you can replace some parts yourself.

It’s not a big drawback when I think it through, I just get sticker shock. It’s a bargain, actually. I’m telling myself this as I prepare to buy a new pair of the best conference shoes ever.

Look at this Customized Z-Coils Pinterest board I found today!

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2010 CGOA Runway: Tunisian Weightless Wrap

Vashti Braha modeling the Tunisian Weightless Wrap, CGOA fashion show 2010 in Manchester NH
At least one of these photos was taken by Doris Chan at the Chain Link Conference fashion show, 2010, Manchester New Hampshire. View full size.

Found these photos I’d forgotten about! They was taken at a crochet conference in 2010. I’m modeling the Tunisian Weightless Wrap because it won an award in the CGOA Design Contest.

CGOA Design Contest, 2010

Read my short article on the very first year of the contest (2008). It has since become an exciting annual event, thanks to Doris Chan’s tireless efforts in the early 3-4 years of it.

The Weightless Wrap is the inspiration for one of my longest running crochet classes on Tunisian eyelet meshes. I’ve just completed the 2016 class resource page for it–that’s how I found these photos again.

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National Crochet Month Specials

Sister filet scarves: Antoinette Sparklescarf, Emdash, and Cantina Party Flounces

Welcome, Natcromo Blog Tour Visitors!

In honor of (Inter-)National Crochet Month, I’ve added a lacy spring scarf pattern to my Ravelry shop: the double-flounced Emdash Scarf. It’s free for one week.

I thought I’d show you Emdash’s crochet story in pictures. National Crochet Month is for crochet stories, right? Especially about lacy spring scarves. First, the design sketches:

Emdash has two design sisters.

There they are all together at the top of this post. It’s easier to show some alternate views of them this way.  Antoinette is the eldest (I published her popular pattern in Nov. 2011). She loves lace weight metallic mohair with sequins and other holiday party yarns. Cantina is the youngest, even though her pattern was published before Emdash’s (in Dec. 2015). Cantina is a freewheeling hippie girl who likes color parties, scrap yarns, and beads.

How did Emdash get her name?

While I was exploring special characters on my keyboard, I kept seeing the scarf draped on my mannequin. The columns of tall stitches are grouped with vertical spacers. (I like the slightly different crocheting rhythm of it.) They started reminding me of emdashes, yes—a type of punctuation. It shortens so nicely to “Emmy.”

The last part of her design story is that I learned how to format and print out kit patterns with the Emdash Scarf, for the show booth I had last summer. This means Emdash is also available as a printed pattern while they last.

Happy National Crochet Month!

 

 

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Yarn Tests for a New Tunisian Crochet Filet Design

Yarn tests for stitch close up photos: color, plying, thickness, etc.
This blog post is third in a short series about the development of a new Tunisian crochet pattern pdf.

Two kinds of yarn tests.

I did two kinds of yarn tests for my new Tunisian crochet filet scarf (first blogged here).

#1. For Tutorial Close Ups

I’ve learned to take three things into account: the yarn’s plying, color, and thickness.

Yarn plies: I have the best luck with a single ply yarn. More than one ply can add a distracting texture, especially in close ups. I love the look and colors of the purple yarn in the first photo, but its plies worried me. (Each individual ply of this unusual 100% cashmere yarn is twisted, but there’s no twist holding them all together.)

The color(s): Yarn colors also matter for Tunisian crochet filet close ups. A single light color shows texture depth the best. I tend to avoid variegated yarns, with exceptions here and there.

Extreme close up of a good quality crochet thread makes it look old and hairy.
Opera crochet thread is known for its polished, silky beauty. This extreme close up is not its best look.

Subtle color shifts can be a real plus with Tunisian crochet, though! I think this might be because it helps the eye distinguish forward pass loops from return pass loops. (Four Peaks images are good examples of this. Strong contrasting color shifts would normally be distracting. This isn’t the case for Four Peaks because of the small, fine-grained Tunisian simple stitches.)

Yarn weight: If I’m taking close up photos, and the camera has a good zoom lens, why does it matter how thin or thick the yarn is? How about using a crisp crochet thread? I discovered the hard way that I have better luck with a thick yarn. With thread and skinny yarns, the individual fibers show up too much in each loop. Even slight fuzziness is magnified. It makes the yarn or thread look old, shaggy, and worn out.

#2. A Winter Yarn

I fell in love with my first Tunisian crochet filet design in wool. That would be…Warm Aeroette! (Hence the “warm” part.) Traditional filet lace has mostly been a cotton thread kind of crochet project. Maybe that’s why I didn’t think of wool at first.

Until Aeroette I’d only had Tunisian crochet filet thoughts in bamboo (Ennis), silk (Aero), and cotton (dishcloth test in my Lotus yarn). It’s thanks to Warm Aeroette that I discovered how nice Four Peaks is is in a toasty aran-weight wool.

I needed to test with classic wool yarn to know Aeroette better. Could it work in something other than Aero’s fancy silk? Unlike Four Peaks, the wool yarn I used isn’t thick; it’s a fingering/sock weight fine-micron merino wool. (Fine-micron merino has a lot in common with cashmere.)

Thin fingering weight gives the tall Tunisian filet stitches a fine-grained texture. In a thick wool like the Mochi Plus (blue photo above), the filet-style lacy eyelets could look clunky or lumpy as a scarf. Would be a lovely afghan border though!

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New Tunisian Crochet Pattern PDF: What Takes So Long?

Both sides of Tunisian crochet often look nice if it's a lacier pattern.
           —-:—-
This blog post is the second part of a short series about the birth of a new crochet pattern pdf. The third is here.
Update: Downloadable PDF for the new Tunisian crochet Warm Aeroette Scarf is officially in the shop.

 

Behind the scenes of a new Tunisian crochet pattern

Pictured is draft #4 of Warm Aeroette Tunisian Crochet Scarf.

I’m a slow, deliberate pattern publisher.

Draft 4 of Warm Aeroette Tunisian Crochet Scarf. Almost done!

I love crocheting and so I think I chronically underestimate how much work it really is! Not only does a step almost always take longer than expected, I don’t always know when I need to recharge. (Each of these is a “step”: a stitch diagram, a photo tutorial, pattern testing, sizing, tech editing, etc.)

The Aeroette pattern has a longer title because this is a downloadable single pattern. The title needs to tell crocheters (and search engines) as much as possible in one line.

Three things can slow down new Tunisian crochet patterns for me:

Each design seems to bring unique issues!

For Aeroette, starting the scarf in one corner is a biggie. It merits a nice step by step photo tutorial. It’s a rare construction method for Tunisian crochet. Also, the best pattern wording evolves slowly sometimes. For Aeroette I’ve revised the wording of how and where the beginning and ending picots go a few times for clarity. Tunisian crochet pattern language has its own conventions.

Temptation of creative design details.

Doris is the same way and we laugh about this. Maybe optimize X, or add Y feature? What about this or that variation? I’d better swatch it in a very different yarn to make sure the design is not dependent on the yarn I’m using.

How educational it is. 

Aeroette started out originally as a practice project for a class on the Aero Tunisian Filet Lace Wrap. My goal with Aeroette is that it serve as a new Tunisian crochet skill building experience.

Sometimes I print a 2-to-a-page draft like you see here, to save paper. To save printer ink, the photos and captions are temporarily tiny. Most images are step-by-step tutorial photos that will all go on a back page. That will make printing them optional to save everyone’s printer ink.