Crochet Queen: Royal Ramblings

Artists & Makers Editor Jeannnine Stein explains in her editor's letter that the goal of this exciting new magazine is to “be that friend, that peer, who will guide you through the rough spots, help you celebrate the victories, and inspire you to achieve your wildest dreams” in today's atmosphere where supporting art and handmade goods is the right thing to do. As I began my first-pass perusal of Artists & Makers I was struck by the incredible information in just the ads! I viewed full-color ads about arts and crafts; things I will probably never do, but are nonetheless inspiring.  These are some examples:  “next steps in painting with fire, video on binding custom books, a mixed media art retreat; and a coffee table book about art studios; and that is just from the first 8 pages! "Gustavo Victor Golar: Carving His Own Path" As I continued to delve into the content of the articles, there was exciting insight to share. I chose one article to share...

Tuesday July 8 , 2014 Amy Solovay: Boat Woman/Entrepreneur ~ Part 1, The Business I met Amy when she joined my fan group, Cro-Kween Designs   on Ravelry. She was humble, enthusiastic and a delight to have as a group Courtesan. Being familiar with the amount of crochet content she was responsible for providing on Crochet.About.com, I was amazed to find that she lives on a boat! As the Crochet Guide/Expert, her primary responsibilities included writing content and maintaining the site, integrating the content into the site's structure, maintaining the crochet blog, and maintaining a forum. Amy recalls, “There was also a period of time when I was overseeing the work of other writers for the crochet site in addition to my primary responsibilities.”Readers can still see much of the work Amy published by going to the site . Very impressed by her crochet knowledge and all she has to offer to crocheters, I wanted to get to know Amy better and learn about the secrets to he...

Tuesday, October 16, 2012 It is really amazing and gratifying to stop a moment and to contemplate how far we have come in the crochet world. To think that back in 1994, when the Crochet Guild was beginning to hatch, we were begging for good patterns, rarely saw a new book, didn't have a conference, didn't have guild chapters...We've come along way baby! During this last week, I've been gasping for breath, running around, busying my mind all due to crochet activity. There is so much to celebrate and October 12 was I Love Yarn Day sponsored by the Craft Yarn Council (CYC) . I had the idea of yarn-bombing as a way of showing my love of yarn. I threw out the idea and 3 other chapter members stepped up to join my effort. I had spied a "delicious" set of 3 bronze statues depicting children holding hands and skipping. "How perfect and easy," I thought, "to string chains of squares from hand to hand to lend color to this wonderful sculpture. Concett...