I’ve been thinking a lot about the great discussion of FREE that I mentioned Thursday on the blog. Essentially, its the idea that by giving away information you create a caring community of people who learn about you and what you have to offer as a crafter. It’s a big part of blogging. We give away information, tutorials, tips, etc. I love reading blogs, and I love creating useful posts. I’ve been thinking a lot about how I want my blog to be structured, and I’ve been thinking I’d like to do even more on the tutorial side, too.

One of my other favorite free things to do is interact one-on-one with users of my patterns. Occasionally, but not too often, knitters and crocheters will write me with questions and I enjoy helping them. Often it helps me identify what might be a tricky bit in a pattern, and what might be a concept that I could explain better. So if you would like help or advice on a pattern of mine, please feel free to contact me, via e-mail: (aoh@ipsmedia.com), or ravelry (amyo) or twitter (plainsight). I look forward to hearing from you.

Speaking of free, this is a good bit of the yarn that was sent up by generous Portland yarn dyers for members of Cat Bordhi’s visionary retreat to try out. (Thanks to Leila Wice for taking the picture.) Seeing, touching and working with new yarns is such an important part of the design process. We are all so grateful to the yarn companies who donated the samples.

It’s amazing the energy that seems to be happening this new year. The few listservs I am on are abuzz with ideas, it’s exciting to hear about new technologies and trends in publishing and the web new books coming out in crochet and knitting. (I’m particularly excited to see Dora Ohrenstein’s new book Creating Crochet Fabric, and I’ll post a review as soon as I can get my hands on it.) Right now I’m reading Myra Wood’s Crazy Lace, An Artistic Approach to Creative Lace Knitting. It’s a wonderful book that teaches how to knit lace without patterns. I loved Myra’s first self-published book Creative Crochet Lace, and this book does not disappoint either. It’s a groundbreaking new look at lace with fabulous techniques and ideas.

I want to thank everyone who participated with me in making ornaments in December. I’m sorry I only got to 18! I would love to try again next year for 24, so I’ll start looking for ideas sooner.

We spent our Christmas holiday in San Francisco with my brother and his family. It was fun to be in the city, and do big city things–I got to go to a real bar with live music including my sister-in-law Sara’s best friend Kristen who sang some great holiday tunes and a visit by one of my favorite singers Jonathan Richman:

We went to the movies and saw Avatar (fun, but we were sitting too close for the 3-D effects, and it made the print look blurry), and took the kids to see The Princess and the Frog which was great! I loved the music and the actors and the story, AND the “old-style” animation.

After leaving the theatre, we were wondering through downtown looking for a Japanese restaurant that was open on a Sunday afternoon and we walked right up to the Museum of Craft and Folk art. It was true serendipity. I had e-mailed Sara in November to say I really wanted to see their current exhibit, but then I forgot about it. The exhibit is called Open Source Embroidery and it is a great intersection of craft and technology, and it really appealed to my geekier side.

I loved the quilt of web colors.  (Little known fact: a million years ago before I was a knit and crochet designer I was a web designer!) Each hexagon was embroidered with it’s HTML color equivalent:

The kids enjoyed the more hands-on pieces in the exhibit including a chair that played music while you embroider on it, and graph paper where you could draw a pattern which would then be interpreted by a computer and turned into music.

Here’s a slide show of our visit to the exhibit which continues at the Museum of Craft and Folk Art until January 24th.

Now that we’re back I’m quickly throwing myself into a slew of new projects I had been saving until the new year. I’m preparing to teach, take classes and work on an upcoming book project at Cat Bordhi’s visionary retreat in February.

For the first time in years I won’t be attending the winter TNNA show. I’m sad I won’t get to see friends, but I’m excited about the new things that are brewing within the Stitch Cooperative. We have TWO collaborative books coming out this year and much more exciting stuff in the pattern department.

I’m working with Julie Holetz on new issues of Inside Crochet magazine and we’ve got some great designs in the works there. In fact issue 6 will be out pretty soon with a great cardigan by Robyn Chachula among other things. (Oh, and Julie made the trek to our airport hotel to visit when we were stopped over in Seattle on our way home to Alaska, and I can prove it with a cheesy self-portrait!)

I made a fun hat for my sister-in-law for Christmas which will certainly end up being published sometime this year, and right now I’m working on a little scarf in 100% Yak yarn from Bijou Basin Ranch. I will post pictures as soon as I’m done.

During the crazy ramp-up to Christmas I took Stefanie Japel’s class on Teaching Online Classes–and I plan to start offering my own online classes soon. I have some fun class ideas lined up but I’d also love to hear what YOU would like to take a class on. Leave a comment on this post letting me know your thoughts and I’ll enter you in a drawing to win this adorable little Japanese crochet book full of cute accessories that I picked up during my mad rush through Daiso–a Japanese store in San Francisco which is GREAT for buying stocking stuffers.

The book has amigurumi toys, cute little purses and flowers and even a lipstick cozy. All the patterns are done using charts so there’s no need to know Japanese. The contest will be open until Friday January 8th. I’m looking forward to hearing your ideas!

by art makes me smile

Are you working on any transformative works? If so, please consider showing them off on Fair Use in Art and Craft Day, May 1st.  When you’ve got something to show, post it to your blog, to facebook, and too our flickr group. Meanwhile, you can read a little bit about what inspired the celebration.

If you’re looking for inspiration, you might want to visit Creative Commons. Creative commons is an organization that has created licensing options for authors, artists, crafters, makers, etc. that go beyond simple copyright to allow specified forms of creative reuse. You can read a lot about what the licenses are on the site, and you can learn how to apply them to your own work. Also, there’s a great search engine on the web site that allows you to search for other works that have been licensed to specifically allow your use of them in your own work. The engine searches Flickr, blip.tv, google, yahoo and music sites. (Some other web sites, like flickr allow you to specify various Creative Commons licenses when using their internal search engines.)

I’ve been caught up with a bunch of little projects and haven’t worked on any specifically transformative works…yet…but I’m still musing on it, and expect to have something to show on May 1st. Today, however, I transformed some sparkly roving from Pagewood Farm into a hairpiece for a wig-themed party I’m going to tonight. Pictures to come, certainly.

Carol Ventura has a great post today about how she designed the Sunburst Bowl that’s in the current issue of Crochet Today (A must-have issue, by the way, that features top designers and great editors working within the strict constraints of using only one family of yarns–Red Heart–doing a fabulous job of creating home and fashion projects.) Carol is an amazing evangalist for tapestry crochet–she shares her immense knowledge with love and generosity and it shows. More and more people are trying out the technique as evidenced by the lively ravelry group on the subject.

I’ve been obsessing lately about crocheting in rounds. I’m teaching a class at Pins and Needles in Princeton, NJ on crocheted bowls and baskets… It’s definitely an exercise in letting go for some of my students. When you crochet in the round your work grows organically, you may need to adjust the increase here and there so your circle stays flat. The idea that a fixed pattern will not work was particularly disturbing for one student. She actually went home and developed a mathematical formula for how her particular piece should increase. I was impressed that she’d spend so much time working it out. Unfortunately, it didn’t work. Since her hands aren’t machines, the piece still needed to be massaged into being nice and flat. I suggested she might want to take up machine knitting.

Here’s the basic formula I use for flat circles:

Ch 4, Join with a slip stitch.

Round 1: 8 sc into the center of your hole. Don’t join the yarn at the ends of rounds; instead just let your circle “spiral” onward.
Round 2: (sc in first stitch, 2 sc in next stitch)* repeat from * to the end of the round. [12 stitches]
Round 3: Same as round 2 [18 stitches]
Round 4: (sc, sc, 2 sc)* repeat from * to the end of the round. [24 stitches]

Continue building the circle, each row increasing less (sc, sc, sc, 2 sc), etc. If your circle starts to look wavy, try smoothing it out on a flat surface. If it won’t stay flat, you’ll have to rip out your work to where it lies flat and add at least 2 more sc between each increase. If the edges are curling up, try increasing a bit more—go back to the last flat round and repeat it for another round before changing your increase.

I like to make small things–I’m an instant gratification kind of gal, but I’ve always been attracted to the idea of making a rug from strips of fabric. If I ever run out of yarn, I may have to try it.