Tag: class

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Day 1 of 50: Crochet Conference Prep

“Day 1 of 50”?

Yes. Fifty days of updates. Fifty is 7 weeks-and-a-day, a nice round number. I need all 50 because I’ll be teaching 5 different 3-hour classes at a crochet conference while managing a booth in its market. It’s epic.

A friend is preparing to teach at the same event for the first time, and another friend is considering it in the future. They’re on my mind as I do this prep again. (It’s my 2nd time having a booth and I think the 6th time teaching lots of classes.)

I’m going to track my progress and thoughts out loud as I go. Some days it’s teaching prep, other days it’s booth merchandise/yarn company stuff, and always lots of swatching and designing. Most days it’s a jumble and I’ll blog a highlight of it. Years from now I’ll enjoy looking back over this.

Today I Cross a Big Teaching Item Off the List

The yarn used in a crochet conference class can matter immensely. Having also taken many crochet classes, I know how hard it is for students to choose which yarns to bring to class.

I asked a yarn company if they would sponsor my Stitch Games class at the crochet conference. This means they would donate enough yarn for all the students to use. Today they said yes. 

This makes my week. Their hand dyed yarn is my first choice for this class! (Below are swatches of this company’s yarns in soft colors. These are tests for other class topics.)

I’ve used it so much while developing the Stitch Games swatches and designs. I know its fiber, weight, bounce, and twist work for key stitch patterns, and I find the color sequences are dependably easy and fun for crochet. I want each student to have the best possible experience learning something unfamiliar. This yarn helps guarantee it!

This colorway is custom hand dyed for my local yarn shop. It’s called “Grape Jelly” and is based on the colors of the Crown Jellyfish photographed by the yarn shop owner in Fiji’s Rainbow Reef.

Bare Bones Scarf is crocheted corner to corner as a “game” in which you assign stitch groups to yarn colors! It’s one of three patterns in the Crochet to the Colors Playbook.

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Crochet Along Shaping Thoughts (Jempool CAL)

Jem CAL: Crochet Along Announcement for the Jempool Scarf methodThere’s a crochet along (CAL) going on right now for the Jempool Scarf. All the posts are public and it’s free (the pattern and technique info is $5), so anyone can join in any time.

While I was crocheting Jempool, I wondered if I should complete it as a traditional rectangular scarf. Maybe it would like to be something different?

I quickly discovered that when you stack each color of a variegated yarn, you can’t just increase or decrease stitches to shape a sleeve or neckline. The color repeat sequence becomes the pattern repeat.

Below are some sketches from when I was working this out. I needed colored pencils to help me see if there might be a 2-skein version I’d prefer even more than the simple 1-skein scarf.

Sketched ideas for other shapes of the basic Jempool Crochet Along rectangle.
A few ideas for shaping with a fixed-width rectangle.

If one complete color sequence gave me a 9″ (22.86 cm)-wide scarf, that 9″ is a fixed pattern repeat. That means I could double it (or triple, etc). In this case the colors are symmetrical, so I could also halve it; a 4.5″ pattern repeat is easier to design with.

So as part of the crochet along, if you try a Jempool and you’re loving it but you don’t need to end up with a scarf, you could think of it as a repeatable motif. A handy seam here or there could yield a ruana, poncho, shrug, etc.

Jempool is reversible, so it could easily be turned into a möbius. I’d just need to add a half twist then seam together the two ends.

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Color Pooling Crochet Stitch Games-Class

Planned vs. Accidental Color “Pooling”

 

2016 collage for "Stitch Games" CGOA class
This is the 2016 class web-poster at the CGOA event headquarters.

Last summer’s Get Your Geek On CGOA event inspired my new three-hour crochet class in Charleston SC (July 13, 2016); some new booklets and patterns too. Many of us have sought insight into using hand-painted yarns. These yarns are often boldly variegated with short color changes and other indie dyeing methods. Color pooling is exciting!

You’re looking at stitch game projects I designed from 2009 to a month ago. (There are more but they don’t all fit in this image.) Pattern for the vivid blue striped scarf (Jempool) releases this week.

Use crochet stitches to turn the color volume up or down (or both, selectively!). Exaggerate the element of chance: accidental pooling. Or, eliminate it: planned pooling.

What’s Color Pooling?

Variegated (multi-colored) yarns seem to have randomly and evenly mixed colors in one skein. It’s like a party in a ball…unless the colors stop looking well-blended when crocheted or knitted. A color might repeat too often, or pile (pool) up on itself row after row in a blotchy way. That’s pooling in a bad way.

Texture pooling is a variation of color pooling. Ever use a yarn with dramatic thick and thin areas, and find that these texture contrasts clump together awkwardly? The texture changes are pooling. That also happened with the intermittent tinsel sections of an expensive mohair yarn. I thought it would look magical! Instead, the tinsel just looked lumpy and stiff when I crocheted it.

Sprinkling Love Knots among simple double crochets {UK: tr} retained the otherworldly look of the yarn by giving the tinsel more room. The result was Marisa Artwalk, an exhilarating discovery.

“Stitch Pooling” Makes Color Pooling a Game

Lcustrine Cowl, Tea Lights, and Bare Bones scarves.
The three patterns in the Crochet to the Colors Playbook. This is simple stitch pooling that alters color pooling.

A simple stitch game I like, especially with crochet, is what I call stitch pooling. I switch to a contrasting crochet stitch when a certain color comes up as I crochet. Knitters do this when they switch from stockinette to garter whenever a certain color comes up, for example. Crochet gives us so many texture choices for creating a simple game, or a wildly challenging one! You can heighten or de-emphasize colors too. This is accidental color pooling that’s fresh, interesting, and each result is unique. Just use familiar crochet stitches.

Pictured at right are three examples of beginner-level stitch games in a pattern booklet.

Color Pooling According to Plan

Eliminate chance and you get regular coordinated patterns of color. The game here is to identify the unique color code of a variegated yarn. You decide where they show up in your project. (See my newsletter issue #77, Find the Color Code of Short Striping Yarns.) Then, choose the crochet stitch, gauge, and number of stitches to get the color patterning you want.

To see when this class is offered next, check the Upcoming Classes & Events page. It’s updated regularly.

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Star Stitch Crochet Class Resources

Four kinds of star stitches: corrugated cowl, striped scarf, quilt-like coverlet, sheer glittery lace capelet.

A Star Stitch For Every Purpose is the name of a sold out three-hour crochet class that I taught in July, 2014 at the 20th anniversary annual conference for the national crochet guild (CGOA). I researched over 200 sources from the 1840’s to the present. Class materials included a spiral-bound booklet of star stitches and a step by step how-to section.

Star Stitch: Visit These First

Star Stitch History

The earliest example of star stitches I’ve found so far is in an 1881 issue of a Norwegian magazine. It’s remarkable to me how seldom star stitches have appeared in crochet books since 1881.  

When star stitches do appear in a book or online, they can vary in ways both subtle and dramatic. It’s mainly because it’s a compound stitch. It multiplies the opportunities to vary each step along the way.

This is true not only when completing each star, but also when crocheting the next row into it, and what stitches are in that next row. For example, you can crochet stars into stars – with turning or without. You can alternate a row of stars with a row of, say, single crochet stitches. These simple choices change the look of the stitch, and the experience of crocheting them.

Key historical sources

  • 1881: Nordisk Mønster-Tidende.
  • 1886: Knitting and Crochet.
  • 1891: The Art of Crocheting, by Butterick.
  • 1891: Home Work, by A. M. (Toronto).
  • Late 1800’s: Weldons Practical Crochet, First Series (London).
  • 1910: Fleisher’s Book #8.

More Resources

  • I’ve been unable to locate a print copy of two Japanese “Star Crochet” books mentioned in class, but here is the ISBN for one of the volumes: 978-4-579-11323-1.
  • Star Stitch projects and design prototypes as I add them to Ravelry: https://www.ravelry.com/projects/vashtirama .
  • For more star stitches as I create them, bookmark this Star Stitches photo album in Flickr.
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The Five Peaks Tunisian Crochet Shawl: Class Resources

5 views of Five Peaks Tunisian Crochet shawl
I created this resource list for my students & others to explore the Five Peaks Tunisian crochet shawl, and similar start-in-a-corner, edge-as-you-go L-shaped wraps. This extra information didn’t fit into a standard three-hour class. Some items are names of designers, books, etc., that I may have mentioned in class.
Below I also include a complete list of my downloadable patterns for Tunisian crochet shawls and accessories. In classes I show a huge amount of published and unpublished crochet designs. They illustrate what we learn in class, and what can happen when we take it further.              — Vashti Braha

The Five Peaks Tunisian Crochet Shawl design

  • ©2010 Interweave Crochet Magazine
  • The Five Peaks Shawl with Tunisian eyelet border.
    ©2010 Interweave Crochet Magazine
  • The Five Peaks Shawl with Tunisian eyelet border.
    ©2010 Interweave Crochet Magazine
  • ©2010 Interweave Crochet Magazine
  • ©2010 Interweave Crochet Magazine
  • Five Peaks in progress.

All about the “Half-Hitch” stitch

Vashti’s Crochet Inspirations newsletter: Recommended Issues

{This is 2020 Vashti popping in to say that these are in the process of being uploaded to this blog and updated. Links available soon.}

  • Issue #48: “Diagonal Tunisian Crochet Discovery”
  • Issue #44: “Dainty Eyelets for Winter Lace”
  • Issue #64

View all of my downloadable Tunisian crochet shawl patterns

Diagonal striping of corner-to-corner wide wool scarf

This is the Four Peaks Scarf, a stepping-stone version of the Five Peaks Shawl. It starts in one corner and increases at both edges, just like Five Peaks starts. Then you decrease along one side while increasing along the other for as long as you like. When you decrease along both sides, you’ll eventually create the opposite corner—or the “fourth peak”.

All of these steps are used for the Five Peaks too, but…differently enough to get five corners instead of four.

Isn’t it beautiful what this construction method does with a self-striping yarn?

Getting Geeky About the Geometry of the Five Peaks

Inspiring Features, Examples, and Variations of the Five Peaks L-Shape

Try this self-updating Ravelry search. When I tried it, 32 results came up and it seems most of them are true L-Shaped shawls. (Some V-shaped ones are too, but many V’s are not right angles like the bottom point of an L-shaped shawl is.)

Five Peaks Tunisian Crochet Shawl Class was held September 12, 2012 at the CGOA ‘Knit and Crochet Show’ conference in Reno, Nevada (Grand Sierra Resort).