CGOA 2011 Crochet Design Competition Update

Posted on March 17, 2011 by dorischancrochet

My friends all know I am pretty much a slug, much happier hanging around here in my pjs than out in the world. Don’t get me wrong. I am not agoraphobic. It’s not a matter of fear of going outside. It’s about being an at-home crochet designer and having the temperament for flying solo. I venture out only for basic necessities: yarn, food, family maintenance, yarn, toilet paper. So only the most compelling fiber events can coax me out of my nest, chief among them are the Crochet Guild of America conferences.

Although volunteerism does not run freely in my veins, I do stick my neck out occasionally and assume some noteworthy CGOA committee tasks, since most of the work can be done in my pjs. So why should you be surprised that I am taking another crack at running the CGOA Design Competition.

I appreciate that March is National Crochet Month, meaning that special attention is being paid to all things crochet. That makes this a serendipitous time to post the following announcements, updating the status of the competition and sending love to our sponsors. The event is six months away, but now is the time to get your crochet mojo on and consider sending us your creations.

CGOA 2011 Design Competition Celebrates (and rewards) Crochet

Be a part of this singular event celebrating the beauty and artistry of crochet, the only competition of its kind. Thanks to a bevy of magnificent sponsors we have thousands of dollars in cash prizes to award to our winning guild members for the best of the best in crochet design. With a huge $1000 grand prize plus first, second and third place prizes of $300, $200 and $100 respectively in each of seven judging categories plus special prizes, this promises to be the most rewarding event ever.

Here are the design categories for 2011 and their sponsors as of this writing:

—Fanciful Fashion (sponsored by Tulip Co, makers of exceptional tools including Etimo cushion grip crochet hooks and Carry T); fancy adult garments and accessories, including gowns, dresses and evening wear.

—Fashion (sponsored by Tahki Stacy Charles, bringing you fine yarn lines Tahki, S Charles, Filatura Di Crosa and Loop-d-Loop); garments for women or men, including sweaters, tops, jackets and skirts.

—Accessories (sponsored by WEBS, America’s Yarn Store); wearables including shawls, socks, scarves, hats, bags, belts and jewelry.

—Small Wonders (sponsored by Boye and the Crochet Dude brand of crochet tools and accessories); anything small scale, including baby items, toys, amigurimi and small décor items.

—Afghans (sponsored by Caron International and BuyCaron.com); any and all afghans, throws, blankets and bed or sofa covers.

—Thread Crochet (sponsored by AllFreeCrochet.com and FaveCrafts.com, offering diverse crochet e-newsletters, e-books and patterns); anything made with crochet thread, including doilies, décor and accessories.

—Artistic Expressions (sponsored by Leisure Arts, bringing you the art of everyday living); artistic rather than functional in nature, including free-form and mixed media pieces, hangings, sculpture and wearable art.

$1000 Grand Prize, sponsored by Creative Partners (the publishing empire founded by Rita Weiss and Jean Leinhauser) and by Interweave Press.

$100 Special Technique Award from DesigningVashti for outstanding use of alternate crochet techniques and construction including Tunisian, Broomstick and Hairpin.

$100 Peoples’ Choice Award from the Crochet Liberation Front to be chosen on site by attendee voting.

We are thrilled to welcome this year’s panel of judges: Marcy Smith, editor of Interweave Crochet magazine; Kathleen Sams, ambassador for Coats & Clark; and Drew Emborsky, the Crochet Dude. Judging will take place on location at the CGOA Conference in Greensboro, North Carolina, 21 September 2011 and winners will be announced during the Awards Ceremony on 22 September 2011. You do not have to be present to enter or to win but you will want to be there to marvel at the awesome display of entries and unveiling of the winning designs.

Please use the links provided soon at www.crochet.org to download the complete Design Competition Information package and access the electronic entry form. Deadline for entries to be shipped to the receiving location is 31 August, 2011. Please do not submit a form until you ship your entry in August.

Please frequent our sponsors through the links provided and if you can, let them know their generosity is much appreciated.

For fun you can see the results from the CGOA 2010 Design Competition in this post. To see winners and images from the CGOA 2009 Design Contest, visit the CGOA page here. The first such event was in 2008 and not nearly as well organized, but you can see some images here.

>And the winner is… crochet

Posted on March 5, 2011 by dorischancrochet

>As the proud holder of two previous Flamies (scroll down the sidebar to see mine!), I have personally experienced the flood of happyhappyjoyjoy that comes from taking home… posting on one’s blog or website… these beauties. But however the voting goes and whatever the world may think of the Crochet Liberation Front’s Third Annual Flamie Awards, the winner has been, is still and always will be crochet.

There is no other event like it, created for and by crocheters, that specifically recognizes excellence across all these areas of crochet. Not tied to any company, publisher or industry “suits”, we just want to have crochet fun, jump up and down {squeeee!} on awards night and thump each other on the back for jobs well done. And at first, as CLF Fearless Leader Laurie Wheeler will admit, that’s what the Flamies were all about. A wink-nudge take on Oscar night. A lark. But as the reputation of this award has spread and grown over the past two years, so has the weightiness of the crown.

Now the event is under closer scrutiny by yarn execs, editors and the media. Past winners in corporate categories have taken to displaying and, yes, flaunting their Flamies in ads and newsletters, taking the focus of the award far beyond what could be accomplished by individual crocheters. YIKES! The feeling of competition among the nominees is palpable and continues to snowball as the voting draws nearer. Now it sort of matters who wins.


Bozena, nominated for Best Design Adult Garments

On the strength of my design work in 2010 and my book, Crochet Lace Innovations, I have received multiple Flamie nominations, an embarrassment of riches. Honestly I would be totally overjoyed to take home just one this year. But that I leave up to you, the voters. So please check out the list of nominees and cast your ballots when the voting commences on 15 March. The eyes of the yarn industry are upon you!

>Good/Not Good Crochet Precedent Set

Posted on February 4, 2011 by dorischancrochet

>Happy Chinese New Year! Gung Hei Fat Choy, as I would say in Cantonese, but the spelling is suspect. That dialect of Chinese is incredibly and notoriously difficult to write out. Chinese is a tonal language, so the same phoneme (syllable) spoken with a different intonation, rising, falling, dipping or high, means something different. Mandarin, now the national dialect, has just those four tones. I believe Cantonese has five. That’s probably why Cantonese sounds so sing-song; it actually IS a song.

That makes for tons of puns due to those homonyms. The sound “ma” can mean mother or horse, depending on the inflection. Be careful how you call your mom, huh? It is also the basis of many traditions and superstitions. For example, the word for the number four sounds like the one for death. Needless to note, four is not a lucky number in China. One of the reasons that red is the happy, lucky auspicious color is that the word for red sound like the one for prosperity. Makes perfect sense.

In fact, Gung Hei Fat Choy does not translate as Happy New Year, exactly. It sort of means “congratulations and be prosperous”. The prosperity part is incredibly important. But mostly New Year is for eating and connecting with family and honoring ancestors. And eating. For most people the party can go on for at least a week, but strictly speaking, New Year season is 15 days long.

I digress. One of the traditions I observed while growing up in a Chinese American household was that the things you do during New Year set the precedent for the whole year. So if you cry, you will be crying all year. It’s not like the Western thing, the New Year’s resolution. You can make all the resolutions you want, but it’s always up to you to make it so, know what I’m saying? There is an element of personal choice involved after the fact. With the Chinese tradition, you’re rather stuck. New Year karma. So my parents impressed on me the idea that if you are bad, messy, loud or hungry (as if that would ever happen!), then that’s how it’ll be for the rest of the year, no do-overs.

I forgot all about that today. Dang it. I should have gotten all the horrible work done before New Year and set this day aside to do pleasurable, fun, happy stuff. Instead I’ve been getting to tasks that are not my favorites: crochet pattern writing, housecleaning, laundry, pattern writing, updating my design pages at Ravelry, responding to crochet design questions and complaints. Did I mention pattern writing?

Put in another perspective, the only way I can conduct my design business is to write patterns for my crochet creations. Crochet patterns = prosperity. So if I find myself doing pattern writing all year, that can only mean I will earn some fees. This is not a bad thing. Fat Choy, Fat Choy!

However, there are so many other things I could do, better precedents to set for myself. So, in hindsight, here’s my list of stuff I should be doing today for a truly happy new year:

Crocheting. Instead of writing crochet, I really should like to do crochet, now and all year long. Chances are I will anyway, but it might be good to have New Year luck on my side!
Toasting with some bubbly wine, either a Spanish Cava or maybe an Italian Asti.
Consuming mass quantities of chocolate.
Talking to my friends and family. I consider myself a low-maintenance kind of person, but every once in a while it’s good to reach out and connect. It lets them know you are still breathing.
Eating cake. Not baking that cake, though. Baking results in delicious products, yes. But the process entails work, mess, clean-up, which should not be my fate for the entire year.
Browsing and buying yarn, hand candy. No rationalization needed.

Not a superstitious person in the least, I still have that little nagging suspicion in the back of my mind that maybe there’s something to it. So instead of blogging any more I think I’m going to wander off and enjoy setting some other precedents. 🙂

>Free Crochet Pattern with "Hand Candy" Purchase

Posted on January 20, 2011 by dorischancrochet

>Hand Candy (aka yarn). Works for me. Thanks for the term, Renee!

What goes great with hand candy? A free crochet pattern comes to mind immediately. Almost immediately. Right after coffee (which habitually comes to my mind whenever I have to think about anything), wine (the libation that liberates creative passion and floats the mind past pragmatic crochet concerns like how in the heck is this stitch construction ever gonna work?), and chocolate (for which no rationalization is ever necessary).

For all my crochet friends coming to Vogue Knitting Live in New York City this weekend, 21-23 January 2011, Tahki Stacy Charles Yarns, Knitty City (the upper west side destination LYS) and I have created this awesome promotion. Please stop by the Knitty City booth at the VKL marketplace (booths 2301, 2303, 2305, 2307) to see our lovely design, Variations, a set of three projects in Filatura Di Crosa Superior (the most satisfying hand candy I’ve had the pleasure to sample). Choose your shade of Superior, a gorgeous fingering weight luxury blend of cashmere and silk, and with your purchase, you’ll get this free pattern.

Here is the Wrap Variation, a twisted infinity style wrap. Also included are instructions for a scarf and a stole.

I will be wandering around throughout the event, but if you want to catch me being good and still, find me hanging out at the Tahki Stacy Charles booth from 1 pm on Saturday and signing books at the Knitty City booth from 1 pm on Sunday. Wear crochet so we’ll know each other!

Mini Stocking to Crochet… again and again

Posted on December 4, 2010 by dorischancrochet

>Little things mean a lot. Little projects that can be whipped up like lightning in mass quantities and have multiple uses mean that you can do a handmade holiday for everyone.

This tiny retro treasure can be an ornament on the tree, a special trim on a gift package, even a gift in itself. It’s pretty stretchy and can be stuffed with a surprising amount of candy. Really. Chocolate coins, petite candy canes, perhaps a chocolate marshmallow Santa. Hey, if you work a full worsted weight yarn to a generous gauge it could handily hold a gift card or a wad of cash. Just saying.

I posted about this Mini Stocking a couple of years ago, and the pattern given on the blog is here. You can also get it here as a more complete free download pdf from Ravelry. Happy holiday crocheting!