Crochet Queen: Royal Ramblings

Wednesday, July 16, 2014- For an update on this exhibit, Knot Forgotten , and my visit to the University of Illinois to see it on July 15, scroll below. Thursday, June 12, 2014 The University of Illinois has ushered crochet into the world of academia! This is a rare opportunity for crocheters in Illinois and anyone else who might be nearby Champaign/Urbana during July. I plan to check it out and it looks like a very interesting event. To read the story of the man who donated and cataloged his great-grandmother's collection, see the website . Knot Forgotten: The Tennyson Library of Crochet at Illinois July 1-31, 2014 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Main Library (1408 W. Gregory Drive, Urbana, IL) Join the Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Illinois as it celebrates the acquisition of the Tennyson Library of Crochet. There will be an exhibit on the first floor and in the Marshall Gallery of the Main Library, in addition to a varie...

Wednesday, December 18, 2013 Betty Hechtman is not only a talented writer of crochet mysteries but a lovely person as well. How do I know that; when I’ve only briefly met her recently at a needle work show?  Recently we had a phone conversation that lasted for over an hour; it was like having a crochet friend over for coffee. I was so excited about our interesting conversation that I sat down immediately to capture my impressions about her fascinating career! A native Chicagoan, Betty has lived in LA since 1970, but she still has strong ties to the South Side of Chicago and returns here about every 6 weeks. She has a degree in Fine Arts from Roosevelt University in Chicago (also my daughter’ alma mater) where she wrote for the school newspaper. Betty told me that she wanted to write since she was a child. Before writing her first book in 2006, Blue Swartz and Nephritides’ Necklace , a kids’ mystery, she had experience writing for newspapers, magazine, short stories and ...

Tuesday, September 10, 2013 My crochet library, which includes  over 300 volumes, is very personal to me. My books are my friends and that’s because I personally know so many of the designers and authors with books in my collection. A sizable number of the books are even autographed and that increases their value!  Crochetqueen's crochet book collection of over 300 books! Deciding on which five books to highlight here was an enormous, close to impossible, task. Because crochet is so diverse, there is a wide variety of offerings in the books that grace the shelves of my large bookshelf. I started out trying to pick a book that would be representative of each of five decades. However, I quickly realized that my oldest book is from 1916 and I have one from the 1920s, but  there is a gap in which I don’t have any books from the 20s, 30s or 40s. Booklets were common in the 1940s and probably very few books were published. I began crocheting in 1971 and as my skill...