July 2013 – The Crochet Architect

Five days after returning home, I’m still basking in the afterglow of last week’s CGOA Conference (aka: the Knit and Crochet Show) in Indianapolis, Indiana! It was 5 days of fun, fun and more fun! I taught 6 classes there: Mosaic Crochet, Crochet Pattern Writing, Beginning Bruges Lace, Intermediate Bruges Lace, Wiggly Crochet and Reading/Understanding Crochet Patterns. The times of my classes were: Wednesday night from 6-9PM, Thursday from 9AM-5PM with a 2 hour lunch, Friday from 9AM-noon, Friday from 2-5PM, Saturday from 2-5PM and Sunday from 9AM-noon. It was a busy schedule, but I endured and actually had enough energy to teach each class. I had between 5 and 16 students in each class, which is ideal for me (and for them). Every student was a joy to have. They were all eager to learn what I had to teach them during the class. And I believe that they all enjoyed the class(es) they took, which is always a plus! I took 2 photos in the Beginning Bruges Lace class (I tend to forget to take photos when I’m busy teaching). Here are the ladies on the left-hand side of the room and the ladies on the right-hand side of the room:

Ladies on left-hand side of room in Beginning Bruges Lace class

Ladies on right-hand side of room in Beginning Bruges Lace class

Don’t they look focused on their work?

Also at the conference, I did my first book signing (in the Annie’s booth) on Thursday night, during the Shopping Floor Preview. I should have a photo of that soon (hopefully). It was a lot of fun and I will probably do it again at the CGOA Conference in Charlotte, NC in October of this year. I signed my new “Jewelry to Crochet” book, published by Annie’s, that I blogged about on June 30^th. The folks from Annie’s were giving copies of my new book away during the book signing. I met many nice ladies (and a few men, too) at the book signing.

We had our CGOA Members Meeting on Thursday night before the Shopping Floor Preview. Since I’m a CGOA Board member (I’m the Secretary), I was seated at the front tables with the other Board members. Here’s a photo of Jane Rimmer (the CGOA Treasurer) and me there:

Jane Rimmer and me at the CGOA Member Meeting

Jane and I are also the 2 Co-Chairs of the CGOA Masters Committee. We make the policies for the Masters program, make corrections to the program, as needed, and answer questions from the Masters portfolio reviewers (I’m a portfolio reviewer, too). Six out of the ten portfolio reviewers were in attendance at the conference. We all met and had lunch together on Thursday. Here we all are:

CGOA Masters reviewers at conference in Indi

From left to right are Phyllis Nabakowski, Beth Hall, Jane Rimmer, Kathryn White, me (Susan Lowman), Linda Dean and Patti Giorgi. We have 2 levels of portfolio reviewers (junior and senior) and each portfolio is reviewed by 2 reviewers (one from each level). To find out more about the CGOA Masters program, check out the CGOA website here: www.crochet.org.

On Wednesday, Jane Rimmer and I went to the TKGA (The Knitting Guild of America) Masters Day, which was an all-day event. We took this day to find out how TKGA runs their Masters Day so we can put on a CGOA Masters Day at the CGOA Conference next year. It was time well-spent! We learned a lot and will be starting to prepare for our very first CGOA Masters Day soon.

On Friday night, we had our Fashion Show and Dinner. The food was excellent and the fashion show was great, as usual. I laid low and didn’t have to model this time, so I enjoyed the show. Here are a few photos from the fashion show:

Shari modeling her Ebb & Flow shawl design

Also at the Fashion Show Dinner, I met Donna Stinson and Terri Geck from Coats & Clark. Here’s a photo of the 3 Coats ladies at the dinner:

From left to right are: Donna Stinson, Terri Geck and Bobbie Matela (who I met years ago and enjoy seeing each year at the conference).

I spent some time with several friends at the conference, too. Here are some of my friends and me with big grins on our faces:

This is Shari White, who is my first mentee in CGOA and my roommate at most conferences.

This is Kathy (Kathryn) White, who I met at the CGOA Conference in 2011 in Greensboro, NC. Kathy lives 2-3 hours away from me, in Arizona, but it took going to the conference in NC to meet her!!!

This is Marcella Clayton, who I met in the Crochet Pattern Writing class I taught on Thursday. Marcella showed me her design in class and I encouraged her to show it to an editor at the Meet & Greet on Saturday morning. Needless to say, Marcella sold her first crochet design that morning! Go Marcella!!!

At the CGOA Conference last year in Manchester, I encouraged another new designer, Patricia Ritchie, to show her designs to the editors at the Meet & Greet, too. This is the first published design by Patricia Ritchie:

Petite Spring Hat from Crochet World magazine, April 2013, designed by Patricia Ritchie

Candle cover - a "thank you" gift from Patricia Ritchie — Candle cover – a “thank you” gift from Patricia Ritchie

Isn’t it gorgeous? Patricia is so sweet and her design is fabulous!!! She gave me a little “thank you” gift in one of my classes this year. That was very nice and totally unexpected! Here is the candle cover that Pat made and gave me last week:

On Saturday morning, we had the Board meeting at 7AM (I’m sure glad I’m a morning person!). It went well and we got a lot accomplished. I can’t tell you what we discussed because it’s still a “secret”! But all will be revealed in time.

On Saturday night, we had the first ever “CGOA Fun Night”! It was great!!! Amy Shelton, of Crochetville, was the emcee. We had “Show and Tell” throughout the room. We also played “Let’s Make You Squeal”, where Amy called out an item’s name and the first person who had that item in their crochet bag (or purse) squealed with delight to win a prize. There were lots of prizes given out that night, as well as prizes at the Member Meeting and the Fashion Show Dinner (we love prizes in CGOA!).

We also love all the goodie bags filled with fiber goodness that are donated by many sponsors of the CGOA Conference. A big “thank you” to Lion Brand, Red Heart and Annie’s for the fabulous goodie bags! We really appreciate your support of the CGOA Conference!

On Sunday afternoon, the conference was over (boo hoo!). But I made lots of fabulous new memories of fun times with lots of wonderful people. I always feel so energized after a CGOA Conference!

If you’ve ever thought about attending a CGOA Conference, you really should. It’s almost a week of fiber-loving events spent with like-minded people. We speak the “language” of crochet all week! Everyone is so friendly and encouraging of each other. If you can’t make it to a CGOA Conference, I hope you at least have friends who you get together with regularly to crochet together and encourage each other with your crochet projects.

Happy crocheting,

Susan

I’ve been getting ready for the CGOA Conference (aka: The Knit and Crochet Show or the Chain Link Conference) for weeks and I’m almost ready to go (except for packing on Monday)! I’m teaching 6 crochet classes at the conference next week in Indianapolis, Indiana, which is a lot to prepare for. It’s going to be a blast…it always is!!! For more information about the conference, check out this website. The things I love about the CGOA conference are (in no particular order):

1. The friendly crocheters (and knitters) that I meet there.
2. The wonderful classes I get to take (when I’m not teaching) and the new things I learn about crochet (I love to learn more to expand my crochet knowledge and ability).
3. The market (show floor) with lots of gorgeous yarn, crochet hooks and patterns!!!
4. Professional Development Day where we learn more about earning an income through designing, technical editing, teaching, contract crocheting, etc.
5. Seeing and spending time with crochet friends that I’ve made over the years.
6. The Fashion Show dinner.
7. The design contest.

I’ve been a CGOA (Crochet Guild of America) member for over 10 years and I’m hooked (pun intended)! There are so many wonderful, friendly, helpful crocheters in CGOA who are happy to share what they know with each other (mostly about crochet, but sometimes about life in general, too). I’ve made so many really good friends by attending the CGOA Conference each year. I am truly blessed to know so many crocheters from every walk of like, whether they’re professionals, associate professionals or CGOA members at large (these are the nicest people)! I love to encourage new crochet professionals and share my crochet knowledge with others through my classes. I certainly don’t know all there is to know about crochet, but I’m learning more all the time (and that’s what CGOA is all about…learning about crochet).

I’ve been working on a shawl for this year’s CGOA Design Contest for several weeks. I can’t show you a picture of it because one of the judges might see it before the contest and the entries are supposed to be kept secret. But I can share with you the struggles and trials I’ve had designing this shawl (it’s confession time!). First, I made countless mistakes in this shawl and had to rip out a lot of stitches several times to correct the mistakes (I really should have been paying closer attention to what I was doing!). Oh well. Live and learn! Second, I ran out of yarn before the end of the shawl, so I had to frog (rip out) hours and hours of work on it so I can redesign it a little differently to use just the amount of yarn that I purchased last year at the conference (about 950 yards from the Newton’s booth).

One of the “challenges” with this design (besides all of my mistakes and ripping out so many stitches) was the stitches that I worked into the chain spaces sliding around and not staying evenly spaced. The yarn I’m using is a rather slick mercerized cotton (not all mercerized cotton is slick like this one). I do enjoy the sheen this yarn has and the lighter weight of the yarn, so I’m willing to overlook the sliding stitches “challenge”!

I’d like to share a hint to help your stitches stay in place and not slide around, like mine were doing. I normally work my stitches in a chain space into the space and not into the chains. But with some slippery yarns (like the one I’m using), the stitches can slide around and not be evenly dispersed across the chain space. So I decided (after ripping out a huge chunk of my work) that I’d work into the chains themselves instead of into the chain spaces. Here are a couple of photos showing the difference between working into the chains themselves and working into the chain spaces:

Can you see the difference? The photo on the left shows the center 5 red double crochet stitches worked in the blue chain-5 space below. The photo on the right shows the center 5 red double crochet stitches worked in the chains of the blue chain-5 space below (one double crochet is worked in each of the 5 chains). Can you notice how the red stitches are more evenly spaced in the right-hand photo? And they don’t move around anymore. Of course, working into the chains themselves works best when you have the same number of stitches to work into the same number of chains (like 5 chains and 5 stitches).

Well, I’d better get back to preparing for the conference. I hope you all enjoy the rest of this month and are able to enjoy many relaxing hours of crochet!

Happy crocheting,
Susan