HOLY COW YOU GUYS, MY DESIGN IS IN A MAGAZINE! THAT IS MY NAME ON THAT PAGE!

My apologies. Let me collect myself. While I do that, here are some images from the magazine showing off the design:

I started the day early–too early for my taste, but I made it safe and sound. Thankfully I drove down the day before and bunked at a friend’s house that was only 30 or so minutes away in St Petersburg. I made sure to bring a camera with me, but didn’t think even once about bringing any crochet with me at all. I don’t know where my head was, but as it was my first event, I didn’t know if I’d have time to just sit and crochet anywhere. As it turns out I would have spent a lot of time starting and stopping, particularly when  I finally caught up with a lovely lady I’ll tell you about a bit later on.

The event began with the market setting up. Vendors were arranging their items, attendees were already claiming their spots at the tables in the market and setting up their wheels or pulling out their projects. There was a series of demos throughout the day, and I arrived at the hotel just as the first was supposed to start. Things were running a bit behind, so thankfully I didn’t miss anything.

The first demo was on dyeing sock yarn by Celena of Rocket Yarn. Celena was fabulous, and showed us two of her techniques while chatting and answering questions–one was called plasma dip dyeing, and the other was a lot like finger painting. She uses some interesting methods that I, personally, haven’t tried before, so it was a real treat to see another independent dyer “do their thing”.

If you get a chance to ever purchase any of her yarn, or watch one of her demo’s, take a class, et cetera–do. You definitely will not be sorry. Be careful, though, as I think a few of the ladies who attended may have been bitten by the dyeing bug and went home to start playing around as soon as the weekend was over. There was some serious note-taking in that room. If I had thought to bring paper and pen, I may have been taking notes as well.

I had about 15-30 minutes before the next demo, so I took my time walking around the market some more. I gave in and purchased a skein of 100% Blue-Faced Leicester from Celena in shades of blue that are just too lovely. I was planning on keeping it for myself, but I may end up giving it as a gift to someone. We’ll see, as it wholly depends on how selfish I’m feeling when I think about it next.

Let me just say that, since I didn’t really know anyone at the event, and didn’t have anyone go with me, I did a lot of hiding behind the camera. There, that clearly needed to get off my chest, and serves as fair warning for those who may feel I publish too many photos in this post. I’m actually holding back–ha!

The next demo rolled around, and while I wasn’t really planning on attending it, I did plan on visiting the person who was doing the demonstrating. Here enters Tracie Barrett–miss TracieCrochets herself. She was setting up for her demo, people were already piling in and trying to max out the 52 occupancy limit, and I was steeling my nerves up to go say hello.

Trust me when I say that I am awkward in social situations unless I already know the person. While Tracie and I have chit-chatted online, that does not necessarily make us fast friends and allow me to talk easily with her in person. So, I pulled up my Big Girl Pants and went over and said, “Tracie? Hi, it’s Brianna”. And that, dear readers, was the beginning. The awkwardness I was expecting was over after a minute, and I spent the whole time watching her demo, taking photos and expelling a huge sigh of relief. There was a kinship–here we were, two crocheters in a sea of knitters and spinners, and one of us was going to be showing how to make amigurumi.

And show them she did…

Do you recognize the top Tracie is wearing? It’s a Doris Chan design from Everyday Crochet! It was in a lovely lilac color which looked great on Tracie.

Tracie and I spent the rest of the afternoon together. We went and had Korean with some people she knew, which was my first experience with Korean food. Not bad! Would definitely try it again.

After our lunch break, we went and spent some time in the lobby of the hotel, where Tracie received an impromptu drop-spindle lesson via a lovely woman named Diane. Here you can see them finally getting some gorgeous fiber onto their spindles and working on the park and draft method…

This is where we met up with Vashti Braha and her adorable son. Vashti and I greeted each other with a hug, though we’d never met (she’s just that type of person you feel comfortable giving a hug to on your first in-person greeting), then we chatted about the sad demise of The Crochet Side podcast. Pretty soon she and her son were distracted by Diane and Tracie’s spinning and had to get in on the action.

Eventually both Tracie and I were winding down–too much excitement in one day for us, I guess. I really only had the time to spend 1/2 the day there anyway, but it was a really full 1/2 day. We took one last whirl around the market, where we both picked up some spinning fiber, and then we said our goodbyes and went our separate ways.

I can, with ease and no pretense, state that I had a fantastic time. I will admit that I almost didn’t make the drive to Sarasota, that I almost chickened out. A good friend kicked me in the butt, though, and told me I’d regret it if I didn’t go. She was right. I would have regretted having missed meeting all the people I managed to connect with. I would have regretted not being surrounded by ~100 like-minded people. I would have regretted not grabbing one of these guys…

I let the email sit for 24 hours before opening up  Notepad. I probably sat there for 10 minutes in silence, terrified of the blank screen. It’s the same feeling when I sit down to write short stories, poetry, sketch…frozen in time and stuck. Eventually I snapped out of it and came to the decision to freewrite–let it all flow organically out of me, from the heart, through the fingers, onto the keyboard.

What I had wasn’t great, but it wasn’t terrible. I edited a bit, removed a sentence, added it back, removed it again, tweaked the beginning and fiddled with wording. Finally, I just had to say the hell with it. If it’s not what they’re looking for they’ll let me know, right?

So, in case it’s tweaked before the issue goes to print, here is what I sent them…

Brianna is the woman behind The Crochet Side (www.thecrochetside.com), a blog about her crochet ups and downs; and behind The Yarn Side (www.theyarnside.com), a small hand-painted/hand-dyed yarn line. She doesn’t claim to be a master of any one thing, but she’s pretty good at a few. Her first love was crochet; her second love was dyeing yarn. Now she tries her hardest to combine the two while staying cool in an all too hot Florida.

Playful, right? Not awful, not great…definitely not a piece of literature, but whose byline really is? That’s not really the job of a byline, I suppose. But telling a quick 3rd-person story, and attracting the reader into wanting to pay attention to that author/designer/et-cetera–that’s what we want. I hope what I’ve written is good enough to do that. Bring readers here; bring readers to The Yarn Side.

I can’t wait for the Winter ’09 Preview to go live. I can’t wait to share that with you all.  I can’t wait to see my name in print. Sounds sort of self-centered of me, doesn’t it? I always imagined myself to be published, but not like this; I wanted to write books, and here I am putting my stamp on crochet patterns? Well. The twisted paths we find ourselves on.

I wish my grandfather was alive to see all of this come to fruitionl, but I–well, let’s not get into a discussion about an afterlife. I know he’d be proud of me. I know he already was. I get to share it with my family that’s still with me, with my friends, with you.

I’m going to try and meet up with Julie, of 1,000 Petals Yarn, since she was a podcast listener and her yarn was the inspiration for the Jules pattern. She will be vending at the event, so maybe I’ll support her and purchase a couple of skeins I’ve had my eyes on for a while. I didn’t learn about the event soon enough so I wasn’t able to throw my hat in to be a vendor, for The Yarn Side, but there’s always next year! It’ll be nice to get to know the people first, and just enjoy the event as an attendee.

Here are some demos that I’m looking forward to:

Celena Crews, of “Rocket Yarn” – Two Sock Yarn Dyeing Methods
Rebecca Bowen, of Sunshine Knit Designs - Spinning with Silk Hankies
Ginger Clark, of Hanks Yarn and Fiber - Color Spinning
Ginger Clark, of Hanks Yarn and Fiber – Let’s take a test Drive

If you’re in the area, it’d be great to meet up! Let me know if you’re going to make it and we can put together some sort of signal or handshake.

This thing is huge.

See that? I’m crocheting something for that giant 36″ monster. That’s a lot of crocheting considering I’m not just crocheting a giant circle. You’ll see what I mean when you purchase my issue of Interweave Crochet after it comes out.

I can’t believe I get to say that. MY ISSUE. The issue in which I am PUBLISHED. Yes! *fist pump*

So there’s this box full of yarn, with colors and bags and I have to use it, keep track of it, make sure dog hair doesn’t make its way into it, and I’m still in shock.

I need to snap out of this, though, because while I have this big project, I also have to work 8-10 hours five days a week, part-time University every day of the week (practically), and The Yarn Side to try and keep up with. I don’t even have time to podcast, really, and there have been thoughts entering my head that I should put that on hiatus. Then I worry about how people would feel about my doing that.

What to do, what to do.

Right now my only decision is to just try and keep moving forward. Try to work a little of everything everday, not allow myself to become so involved with any one thing for too long, or I focus too much on it and become drained.

How do you best handle a large number of To-Do’s and the stress that comes with it?

My absence began with my grandfather becoming ill, which weeks later turned into an absence because my grandfather passed away. My family has been dealing with all the things families deal with when a loved one is no longer around. We’re all slowly readjusting to life without him, which is hard, but harder when I think about how something so exciting that just happened is the first thing I’m not able to share with him.

That exciting news is that I received word that I’ll have a design published in Interweave Crochet, Winter ’09! I sent two swatches, and received an email from the editor that they want one of the two, and that they would like the finished pieced to be much larger than my initial plans. It’s super exciting, and I can’t wait to get started, but we still need to finalize the contract and discuss yarns.

So what have you been up to while I’ve been gone?

If you have any comments or questions, please let me know in the comments or click on “Contact”.

Well, I did it! In the face of my past rejection goes two designs. One is a lacey winter scarf; the second is a home décor item. The class mentioned only focusing in one design, but I just couldn’t when there was a second that was begging to be swatched as well.

SO, here we are again–waiting impatiently for any response, though preferably a positive one.

While I wait, though, I’ll have crochet to keep me busy (well, and work and uni). I’ve also got tons of yarn and roving to dye, even new colors to play with.

Phyllis asked some great questions, and I look forward to hearing from her readers. :D Make sure to come back and let me know what you think.

Boy, did they ever love it! You can take a listen to episode 79 (yarn porn and thank you’s are at the end) here: http://limenviolet.blogspot.com/.

Also, for those of you who keep track of my yarn adventures, I’ve just purchased some more stock so that I can dye it all up. I’m running low on what I’ve got left, so it’ll be good to get more colorways out of me. ;)

While I’m thinking about it, I’ve been providing stitch guides/patterns videos to the podcast, but I haven’t been posting them here. There’s a reason for that, really. The videos I post to the podcast/vidcast are to show how to do stitches I bring up in a new section I’ve started, “In Stitches”. Since I don’t discuss those here, I haven’t posted any.

If you’re interested in that sort of thing, go visit the Podcast show notes to see the videos.

This is terrifying because of the following questions that immediately began running through my head:

1. Is she going to say I suck?
2. What if I suck?
3. What if, out of all the reviews, I am the suckiest?
4. Will I be the only one who sucks?
5. Is there a club available to those who suck?

Ad nauseum.

For the life of me, I don’t know what compelled me to say yes. The idea of more publicity for the podcast? The fact that the owner of the message, and review forthcoming, was so pleasant and polite in her request? The potential for something good? Because it could be good, right?

I really feel like the last couple of episodes are better than some of the previous. I’ve got a couple of segments that I’m keeping, and I’ve added the video supplement. Lots of people like this aspect, and since I like to teach and help others, it fulfills another…something in me.

So…maybe this review thing won’t be so bad. And she’s sending me questions, so that’ll help put across what the podcast is about, or aiming to be about. This’ll be good–it will. I hope. *crosses fingers and toes*

Well, it’s a Brand New Year, with a Brand New Design, so I’m going to have a Brand New Outlook. I aim to put out more podcast episodes, as well as more blog entries. 2009 is going to be great for each of us.

Let’s throw some photos and text into this entry and make it one big show and tell, yeah?

The following photo was taken by Caryn. I asked if she’d take some photos while she was out in her studio (read: garage), and she broken down and said that she would. Anyway, this photo displays some yarn that I have lying about. The bottom red/pink-toned skeins are different shades of my “The Puppet Show” colorway. The middle two in the blue-green colorway is my “Go Fish”. The top middle two are “Mutant Enemy”–the green on the right skein is more accurate than the one on the left. Damn you photography! The silver-blue skein on the left and right is the new colorway, “New Moon Rising”.

This following photo shows a close-up of the “New Moon Rising”. The skein itself is a Fingering weight, which is perfect for us crocheters. You may thinking working with such a lightweight yarn is tedious, but it doesn’t have to be. Did you know that Jules is crocheted with Fingering weight yarn? It is! Fingering weight allows us to introduce more drape with complex stitches if need be, without the bulk of a heavier yarn. Fingering weight yarn, provided that the contents of the yarn works well, can also give greater stitch definition and shine a design right up. *swims in a bathtub of a Merino/Silk blend in ‘New Moon Rising’*.

The following three photos are just bonuses! The left shows the reverse side of the hang tag that now comes on all of my yarn. It shows you the name at the top, the weight, the yardage/grams, fiber type and care instructions. Then you get to read the inspiration for the yarn, and a quote. All in my lovely penmanship (she says jokingly–har). The middle photo shows you what the skein and tag look like together, and what you can expect to see when you receive a skein. The far-right photo is another shot of the Worsted weight skein that is shown in the far-left. I just really like this colorway, so if I can show a million photos, I will. Sometimes less is not more, people, you know? ;)

So, what has the new year brought you? Have you looked back at 2008 with a clearer vision of what you want to accomplish this year? Did you bust as much stash as you wanted? Has it rolled over into 2009 with a vengeance? Should we discuss ways in which we can bust our stashes even further? A square-a-thon? We all have time for at least one square, right?

Bring me your ideas.

Well, what I’m really doing is giving up on one thing, and integrating something else. The new design will slowly begin to appear in the next couple of days. Hopefully I can get it all to work before I am overwhelmed with 6 days of work, 3 courses, and a crochet deadline.

Eek! I better go get some sleep.
And, hey, look at that! A new design all in place.

A (somewhat of a) coworker (our positions cross paths, and we discuss work things, but lately we’ve been chattering outside of typical work comm’s) instant messaged me, and we chatter for a bit. At some point during the chat, she mentioned that she had tried to learn how to crochet. Well, I don’t know about you, but everytime someone says that, I kind of squee and mentally bounce around. She admitted to being able to crochet a long line (I’m assuming a long row of chain stitches or maybe single crochet), but not being able to understand instructions.

She had picked up Debbie Stohler’s “Stitch ‘n’ Bitch Crochet: The Happy Hooker”, but was still having issues with the language and what she was reading. (As an aside, I admit to not having purchased “The Happy Hooker”, but mostly because each time I browse the book I am not won over.) This woman is far from dim, so I could tell right away that she was one of us–if by “us” you insert “one who learns by seeing in action what she could not grasp on paper.” You know–us.

I gave her the location of my how-to videos online, promised that if we both make it to San Francisco at our employer’s headquarters, then I’d help her even further. I also told her to check out “Teach Yourself Visually Crocheting”, as a lot of the photos and instruction are clear. “But this one,” she said, referring to the former book, “says ‘bitch’!” To which I could only chuckle. She’s a firecracker!

This conversation with her got me to thinking about (1) how mainstream skills like crocheting and knitting have become–they’re not as subversive as they may have once been; and (2) I just really like to help people. I mean, that’s the reason I started the crochet tutorials; that’s one of the reasons I’ve kept up with the podcast; and, work related, it’s one of the reasons I love my job so much.

I enjoy making the videos for both the users I help at TypePad and the visitors to this site and over at the YouTube channel. I enjoy being friendly and giving and making people feel good for contacting me in the first place.

Those of you who e-mail me, asking me to explain a stitch? I love that.

Those of you who open a support ticket at TypePad, or use the contact form, I love troubleshooting the issue you’re having, then giving you the means to fix it yourself, or being asked to fix it for you.

It’s just who I am. I am a people-pleasing, user- and visitor- friendly, cranky-soothing person. It has to be in my genes, or maybe I’m a product of my environment, but whatever it is… it’s not hurting me. So, I’ll just keep on swimming along, helping my fellow people, whether it’s with their stitches or their blogs.

I ended up calling the previous yarn “The Harvest”. This one is “Welcome to the Hellmouth”:

 

(click images to view larger)

Dyed half the skein red (maybe more red-orange) by hand, then stock-pot dyed the whole skein in a medium(ish)-blue. This turned the red (red-orange) a really dark purple, almost black in some spots. There are some areas where the blue didn’t take as well, so the red turned more berry-brown. What ended up happening is that it became this very lightly variegation, and I wonder how it’ll look crocheted or knitted up.

Fingering-weight superwash (wool/nylon) sock yarn.