March is National Crochet Month

Tuesday, March 20, 2012,, Today is primary election day and I hope everyone is off to the polls, like me, to exercise your rights! March is also National Crochet Month.

Started in 1998 by the Crochet Guild of America (CGOA), it was first designated as "National Crochet Week" and was meant as a time for all of us crocheters to celebrate our love of the craft and treat ourselves to some special crochet activity, tool or just "me-time" to do what we love to do! The Craft Yarn Council and their various retailers were already celebrating National Craft Month in March, but we didn't believe that crochet was getting the attention it deserved. So, we hitched on to the them in March and celebrated crochet as an organization. At the Time Pam Oddi was the CGOA President and also the webmaster. As our organization grew and we wielded more influence, we expanded the celebration to a whole month. Shortly thereafter, organizations like the Craft Yarn Council jumped on board and influenced retailers like JoAnn and Michael's to begin celebration crochet as a marketing tooland as a special entity of its won. In 2007, National Crochet Month went International when a group of Ravelers on ravelry.com started NatCroMo. Each year, CGOA joins in NatCroMo as a sponsor and many, many volunteers (hopefully all CGOA members) make this a huge party all during the month.

How will YOU celebrate? I am celebrating all month long by appreciating that I am home and now have my full complement of supplies. In Mexico I enjoyed lots of crochet, but at times I was stopped in my tracks from finished a project because I had forgotten some vital material or other piece to the puzzle. I came home with quite a few WIPs! It feels good to finish them one by one. My freeform challenge project for the International Freeform Crochet Guild (INTFFCG) is grabbing lots of my attention. It is due to be finished April 1 and I am happy and excited about how it is turning out. It must remain a secret, though, until the full color photo book is published some time this summer. Stay tuned.... Also, on March 7, I began another celebration of crochet: Cro-Kween Designs, my fan page,

turned two-years-old on that day. we're having a virtual party for the group with delicious crocheted food and drinks plus games and prizes. Tonight we'll be having a live chat in the group's chat room. Please join us at 6PM central time here: Just click into the chat room and join in on the conversation! It is always both sad and happy to find a vacation ending, especially a relatively long one. We enjoyed one month in Mexico and are glad to be back home. Home is, after all, sweet! It takes a good deal of time to unpack, put things away and get re-organized and re-oriented to a different lifestyle than we lived that last month. But all is well and it is great to be home.

Craft vs. Fine Art: How is Crochet Blurring the Lines

I was awakening to the world of crochet in 1972,a time of immense artistic expression through fiber arts; and crochet was not the “ugly stepchild” at the time. In fact, Ferne Cone Gellar who I admire as a successful fiber artist said in “Knitting: The Stepchild of the Fiber Arts?” ( Fibercraft Newsletter 1978), “Has knitting been slighted among the areas of the fiber arts? The very word ‘knitting’ evokes images of the little old lady in tennis shoes. Over the years, I’ve learned to ignore all those jokes.” Cone Gellar went on to publish Crazy Crocheting in 1981 and encouraged her readers to create more than bedspreads, providing ideas such as “things to play with or to display on a shelf or hang on a wall.” A photo of single crochet from bread wrappers served as inspiration. In 1972 in her book, Creating Art from Fibers & Fabrics , Dona Meilach wrote: “Why are fibers and fabrics becoming increasingly appealing to artists? Most artists agree

Wartime Crochet With Attitude, Part I

Wednesday, October 30, 2013 Karen Ballard and I have a mutual love of free form crochet. We met for the first time in a class taught by Prudence Mapstone of Australia at the Chain Link Crochet Conference 2011. I admire Karen's vast knowledge of needle work history and am grateful for her willingness to share with us as my guest blogger this week. Karen wearing a World War II-era knitting hat with stubby needles on top Karen's Heritage Heart, with flowers symbolic of her heritage, is currently on tour with Prudence Mapstone's traveling "Hearts & Flowers Exhibition" in Australia and New Zealand World War 1 Attitudes About Crochet by Karen Ballard In 2008, I coined that term, "Workbasket Campaigns" to describe the organized efforts during World War I (WWI) and World War II (WWII) coordinated through the American Red Cross {ARC} and the Navy League to create needle crafted items. These items were mostly knitted but also sewn, qu

What is Free Form Crochet?

Monday, January 6, 2014 This topic came about from the title of my article recently in Fiber Art Now magazine. "Crochet As Art: A Conversation with 5 Free-Form Crochet Artists." Yes, the 5 artists I wrote about, all of which are in my book The Fine Art of Crochet , are free-thinking when it comes to their creativity. They are free-wheeling with the hook and use unique fibers in many cases. Once you read the article, tell me what you think? Are these artists doing free-form crochet? In order to define free-form crochet, we must look way, way back to it's origins: Irish crochet. A brief history of crochet, including the Irish method, written by Ruthie Marks is available through The Crochet Guild of America . Unfortunately, there are no images on the site. On her blog, Nancy Nehring has a beautiful montage of Irish Crochet in reference to a class she taught in 2013 at Lacis . I wrote an article in Old Time Crochet Magazine (Spring 1998), "History of Irish Croc

Crochet Queen: Royal Ramblings

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