Tag: conference

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Crochet Conference Wrap Up (with worksheet!)

The new CGOA Master's Program pin. I've earned two charms so far: Writer, and Fundamentals (because I wrote a few chapters of it).
I like this new pin for CGOA’s new Master’s Program (view full size image). These pins were given out on a special night at the conference. I earned the Writer charm for writing two sections of the Masters in Fundamentals.

 

Do you know what I do on the plane flight home from a conference? I fill out a simple worksheet.  It’s a nice way to reflect on everything.

I’ve done this since 2008. That’s at least ten conferences. (In some years CGOA had two conferences, a national and a regional. I’ve also attended a TNNA show here and there.) It has really come in handy so I’ve turned it into a PDF that you can download below for free.

Here’s the story on two of the six entry fields of the worksheet.

“What Got Crocheted?”

This is the first question. What it really means is “Of all the crochet supplies I packed, what did I actually get to?” Can you relate? Originally it was to help me be realistic about how many crochet projects and balls of yarn I need to stuff into my luggage! I know I’m not the only one who packs too much crochet for a trip LOL.

Nowadays I just plain enjoy reflecting on it. Sometimes I’ve even crocheted more rows on a project because I look forward to saying so on the worksheet, so it’s also motivational.

This year, what got crocheted is a swatch idea I’ve always wanted to try: to substitute the chains in a spiderweb pattern with love knots:

I also added so many more rounds to “Astrowirbel” during the 5.5 hour flight to Portland that I almost doubled its size.

“Goals Met & Unmet”

This part of the worksheet used to be more freelance minded, such as, “I finally sat down with X editor.” It has become much more, though. It’s a way to commemorate new friends I’ve made. It has also helped me see that a goal I started with wasn’t very realistic for the event, or as important in retrospect. Or, that I accomplished more than I realized while I was having so much fun.

This year, an unmet goal was to go out into Portland and see lots of roses, the Powell’s City of Books store that sounds amazing, a Peets coffeehouse, and get some supplies for my room. I was too busy teaching, or making sure I ate well between classes.

Some goals I met are: no typos in my class handouts (except a minor one in the Self-Healing Stitches class). I met and spent quality time with Dela Wilkins! I got to know CGOA’s new management company, a great group of people. I think they’re going to be a great fit with CGOA.

Post-Conference Worksheet PDF

Direct link to the PDF: Vashti’s Post-Conference Worksheet.

Keep it in mind for CGOA’s 25th Anniversary Conference July 10-13, 2019, in Manchester NH!

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New Angle on Diagonal Tunisian

A diagonal corner of the Four Peaks scarf.

I put off writing about the Tunisian on the Diagonal class because I kept feeling like I had nothing to say, but also too much! Here’s another paradox: I feel like I’ve been teaching this class since 2010 and yet I never have, exactly. How can all of this be true?

I figured it out after writing the section about its 2009 roots below. Crocheting Tunisian diagonally is a huge topic based upon simple and powerful principles. Vary one thing a little, factor in some momentum, and everything ends up dramatically different.

I’ve taught big sections of this. The 2018 class will be the master class. (It’s great for all skill levels, thanks to the “simple principles” part I just mentioned.)

For contrast, travel back to 2009 with me for a bit.

2009 Tunisian Increase Methods

Nine years ago my first diagonal crochet design happened: the Five Peaks Shawl prototype. (The pattern was published in 2010 in Interweave Crochet Magazine).

Left triangular swatch is starting to curl along one edge. Other triangle is symmetrical with nice drape.
Effect of the “squeeze-it-in” method shows in the left swatch. Not recommended for a shawl.

 There was almost nothing on diagonal Tunisian crochet from corner to corner, or “C2C”. With C2C you increase steadily along both row ends to widen, then decrease steadily until you end at the opposite corner.

The default increase method back then didn’t have a symmetrical, polished drape. I blogged about it (and the photo at right) in June 2009 because that’s when I was working out the increase method for the Five Peaks Shawl.

2009 Tunisian Hook Choices

Tunisian crochet hooks larger than size 6.0 mm (J) were scarce in any style and length, whether straight, flexible, double-ended, short, or long. When you found one, you put up with whatever its material, surface finish, and hook shape was. Remember that?

My options were either a long straight 6.5 mm (K) or a discontinued 9 mm (“M/N”) flexible hook from eBay. I needed a size between these two. Too bad!

Back then, publishers needed designers to use crochet hooks that were commonly available in stores. I worried that I wouldn’t be able to sell the Five Peaks pattern to a magazine. Fortunately, Tunisian hook choices were improving. Only three months later I blogged “Heaven is a Crochet Hook for Every Need”. Nowadays I keep a range of Tunisian hook sizes and lengths.

The Evolving Tunisian Crocheter

We Tunisian crocheters have been enjoying a renaissance for our craft! It had barely started in 2009. Back then, most crocheters still assumed the nature of Tunisian crochet was to be thick, kind of stiff, and with a stubborn curl. Not something that could cascade and swing from the shoulders like a waterfall, or look like a lacy weightless veil.

Each time I’ve taught a Tunisian crochet class since 2010, the students bring more skills and experience to the room. Newer Tunisian crocheters understand things faster. This became really noticeable around 2013. 

Five Peaks classes were the first I taught on diagonal Tunisian crochet. It was ahead of its time in 2009. Since then I’ve learned to start every Tunisian topic with a quick review of the relevant basics. People of all skill levels seem to welcome this. It seems to pull together and standardize the new things everyone is learning from different designers. 

For 2018 I’m excited to be starting out with a review of a different set of basics because when we crochet Tunisian on the diagonal, there are clues we can be looking for but may not recognize for awhile. Things may look wrong for awhile and yet be so, so right. 

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Creative Planned Pooling: Class Resources

Creative Planned Color Pooling Crochet Class 2018 Vashti Braha
Updated on 7/18/18. View the high-res image. This is a conveniently clickable group of things I mention and display in Creative Planned Color Pooling classes. I teach the next one on July 28, 2018 in Portland OR. (An earlier version of this class was called “Crochet Stitch Games” and included game-like serendipity techniques; between then and now, planned pooling has become a popular technique!).     — Vashti Braha

 

Thinking of signing up for this class? I wrote Color Pooling Developments with you in mind.

Crochet Patterns & Crochet Alongs

  • Jempool pattern. It’s the blue scarf on the left in the above photo.
  • Crochet Along: The Jempool CAL (a source of some great info!)
  • See all of Vashti’s color pooling projects and swatches at this self-updating Ravelry link (log in to Ravelry first to see all of them).
  • Crochet to the Color Playbook pattern set. (This is a freeform “stitch pooling” way to modify accidental pooling, rather than doing planned pooling.)

Recommended Issues of Vashti’s Crochet Inspirations Newsletter

My Color Pooling Blog Posts

Photo Albums & Inspiration Boards

Recommended Color Pooling Sites

  • PlannedPooling.com where you can plot the color sequences of your yarn and see how it pools based on your plan.
  • Pooled Knits Ravelry group.
    • This group is how I first found member sanne7788 who does the most inspiring pooled Tunisian crochet I’ve seen so far! (Scroll down to see them all.)
  • Planned Pooling With Crochet Facebook group for crocheting argyles, founded by Summer Cromartie. Especially see Brenda-Leigh Bennett’s 10/21/16 resource page there!
  • Deborah Bagley wrote a meaty multi-part series on several kinds of planned pooling. Start with the introductory roundup of it: Hook and Learn: A Feast for Your Color Pooling Eyes.
  • Laura Bryant: Ikat knitting effects with her ikat-style hand dyed Prism yarns, featured in Vogue Knitting. I took Laura’s pooling class at my local yarn shop and here’s my ikat attempt with slip stitch crochet.
    • If I had to pick only ONE book to read about planned pooling, it would be her 2013 Artful Color, Mindful Knits: The Definitive Guide to Working with Hand-dyed Yarn.
  • Marly Bird: Fantastic YouTube videos and blog posts for crochet planned pooling that argyles.
  • Glamour4You, Sewrella, Rockin’Lola (her granny stitch argyle guest post), Naztazia: Bloggers with popular tutorials for crocheting pooled argyles. Also see Kathy Lashley‘s post, a rare one on the “lightning bolt” effect when pooling in the round, and Kinga Erdem who explains her bold zigzag argyle using just half double crochets [UK: htr].
  • Karla Stuebing: 2013 article, “Art and Science of Planned Pooling.” It’s about knitting but very inspiring for crochet.
  • Wannietta Prescod: this blog post links to her earliest inspiration and to her influential Sweetspot 2009 article for Knitty.
  • Planned pooling crochet patterns, a self-updating link: Ravelry doesn’t seem to have a category for this technique yet, so I used the keyword “pooling”. Of 23 search results it looks like 20 are true planned pooling. Of these, 17 are argyles, and most appear to be seed stitch (as of 4/16/18).
  • Planned pooling knitting patterns, a self-updating link: as with the crochet search link above, I used a keyword search. Of the 91 results (as of 4/16/18), about 80 are true planned pooling designs.

Any Books on Planned Pooling with Crochet?

  • Found one! Yarn Pooling Made Easy by Marly Bird. Published by Leisure Arts, 2017.
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Color Pooling Developments

Some works in progress for the 2017 color pooling class.

The class material for Creative Planned Color Pooling changed me. In fact, it’s still changing me. I’ve adjusted its title to take new developments into account (more on that below).

I’d love to have taken a color pooling class like this years ago! In fact I’d rather learn it in a class than from a pattern or blog. The next time I teach this class: July 28, 2018 in Portland, Oregon. 

Crochet Rules, Questioned

Developing this topic changed me as a crocheter. It showed me what I take for granted about crochet how crochet works. I think it’s because for the first time, something else (the yarn’s color sequence) replaces crochet standards that have always worked for other kinds of crochet.

One ball of hand painted yarn, its colors intentionally "pooled" into two stitch patterns (popcorns and seed/moss/linen st) to create this "Florida Peaches Handbag"
These popcorn stitches vary but it doesn’t matter.

Here’s one: uniformly even stitches are beautiful. We aim to make uniform stitches to get a lovely, polished result, right? Beginners practice until they can be proud of how even their stitches are. Why would one question this?

When you’re intentionally pooling (I think of it as color directing), it’s the yarn’s colors that you aim to make uniform. The evenness of your stitches is second to that. A pretty distant second, which was shocking to me. Why? That brings me to a second way this class material changed me.

Primal Effect

On a bigger and more personal scale, my relationship to color changed! It was like watching my brain re-prioritize what it was seeing. My eyes rejoiced when the yarn’s next color stacked up the way I wanted it to. The stitches for making this happen became almost interchangeable. Even the stitch gauge could vary.

In other words, detecting a color pattern is riveting to the brain. (At least my brain. It feels primal.)

Especially when the pretty color pattern emerges from seemingly random chaos.

Especially when it’s like there’s a secret code in a multicolored ball of yarn and you’ve just cracked it.

The crochet stitch and gauge becomes a strategy: change the crocheting a bit to get a color to stick with the pattern and it works! The eye doesn’t see certain stitch irregularities. It’s too captivated by the color patterning. Also, the nearby stitches will adjust.

Recent Developments

Since my 2016 class, more crocheters have mostly been finding out from blogs about doing planned color pooling (a.k.a. intentional yarn pooling) with variegated craft store yarns. I’m seeing people make a cool argyle effect using the linen stitch (a.k.a. seed stitch, moss stitch, granite stitch): each row is [sc, ch 1, skip next st], and you crochet the sc of the next row into the ch-1 space of the completed row.

See this stitch in the colorful Aquarienne edging, Peaches handbag opening & handle, and Quailfeather. Accidental argyling happened with Barista. From a distance you can see a soft (but intentional!) argyle in this tweedy swatch and an argyle effect getting going in this swatch.

Colorful sock yarns custom dyed for my local yarn shop in coral reef colors.I came to this topic a completely different way, via hand dyed yarns. It’s easy to identify the dye techniques, such as hand painting and dip dyeing, because these yarns tend to be sold in the hank the dyer used, not wound into balls.

In these dyed hanks I saw “stitch games” because I’d already done other color-based and geeky experiments. For example,

  • When I learned from Marty Miller how hyperbolic crochet works (2006 or so), I crocheted her a hyperbolic coffee cozy secretly based on her birthdate.
  • A hand dyed yarn with a vivid yellow in it made me want to set it off with love knots. “Love Games” was the result.
  • I even sold a coffee cozy to a yarn company back in 2006 because I referred to it as a game.

Why “Creative Planned Color Pooling”?

Earlier versions of this class were “Stitch Games for Yarns With Short Color or Texture Changes” (2016 in Charleston SC) and “Stacked Color Pooling” (2017 in Mt. Pleasant IL). Planned pooling is becoming a recognizable term for more crocheters. I suspect that only seed stitch argyles come to mind for some. Also, some folks seem to think this is math based, but it doesn’t have to be. At all.

Creative is the important part of the new title because we’re still at the early stages of what is possible. There is way more to planned pooling than seed stitch argyles. What about lace and tall stitches? Shaping? Tunisian? I want crocheters to experience the possible! And of course to be changed by it.

The class resources page for this topic is updated as of 4/16/18.
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Self Healing Stitches to Cut: Class Resources

2018 Self-Healing Crochet Stitches and How to Cut Them Class by Vashti Braha
Up to date as of 2/03/2022. This page will likely be updated again before class time and possibly after. 
View full size images of steeked swatches. 
This page is a conveniently clickable group of things I mention in the Self-Healing Crochet Stitches and How to Cut Them classes. I teach the next one online!—Part One on March 8 & Part Two on 9, 2022—from 10:30am –11:30am CST. I show a lots of published and unpublished designs in this class. Each illustrates the stitches and techniques learned.  — Vashti Braha
Considering signing up for this class? Read Why “Self-Healing” Crochet Stitches?

Recommended Articles

Designs & Patterns

Steeked Crochet Designs by Others

Inspiration Boards for this ClassA chunky lace vest that can be completed in 2 hours because you create armholes later with quick steeks (cutting).

Self-Healing Crochet Stitches and How to Cut Them started out Tunisian-only in 2016. It was originally titled Steek (Cut) Tunisian Crochet Lace for Fun, Fast Fashions. I overhauled the title to help differentiate this topic from steeking knit fair isle sweaters and other traditional reasons for steeks.

Three fashion trends are relevant to this class topic: graphic/linear texture, net lace, and fringe. I’ve created a Pinterest board for each trend.

  • Steeks: Ideas These are often simple shapes that become magically wearable and trendy with just a cut or two.
  • Trend: the New Fringe I thought today’s fringe was a passing fad but it continues to have a lot of mojo! That’s great for us. Many cut stitch patterns beg to be fringed, especially if you don’t want to use a double-ended hook for Tunisian lace nets. If you cut across several rows, turning that cut edge into fringe is the ideal thing to do with all the ends.
  • Trend: Simple Crochet Mesh Nets It’s a classic fabric with fresh boho looks. It’ll be a long-term trend because it’s also now going urbane-futuristic-techie.
  • To Try with Tunisian Crochet Nets (linear, visually directional fabric grain as design element)

Cutting self-healing stitch patterns is a unique and fun construction method. Knowing how to easily steek as part of your crochet skillset opens up a whole creative avenue of projects. It’s freeing and empowering. As of 2022, it’s always an option that comes to mind when I’m dreaming up a new design. It goes together with inventive folds and seams I might like to use.

I find it also makes pattern schematics newly inspiring—especially for simple shapes. You might enjoy newsletter #80: Pattern Schematics for Insiders and Outsiders. and its “overflow” blog post, Steek Crochet With Pattern Schematics in Any Language (June 2016).

Any Books on Cutting Crochet?

I’ll add information here as I find it, so please check back. (In 2016 I found nothing in books on specifically steeking Tunisian crochet. (If you know of a source, please leave a comment.)

Original 2016 Steeked Tunisian Lace Class Resources page.