>When you’ve tinkered with enough yarns and fibers you get to know which ones are going to give you grief. I personally crochet all my own design samples so I need to work quickly and efficiently in order to meet my deadlines… er… come close to my deadlines… hmmm. Let’s not talk about deadlines, huh? Anything that holds up the production line is my enemy; yarns that split and snag are the worst culprits.

With experience I’ve learned to come to terms with yarns that tend to split. If you use a large enough hook in a loose enough gauge you can keep splitting to a minimum. Still, if the project is important enough and has to be perfect (which describes pretty much everything I crochet!), you should check your stitches occasionally and be prepared to frog back and fix the split.

Snagging is a whole nother matter. Snagging has nothing to do with how you crochet. It is an insidious cosmic conspiracy devised to keep us humble. It is a reminder that even though we among all beasts are blessed with opposable thumbs, we are but lowly, inept mortals.

My issues with snagging began way before I had a career in crochet. My mother, in a useless attempt to civilize her daughter, persuaded me to replace my beat-up Chucks with stockings and pumps. I saw nothing wrong with pairing sneakers with skirts (I still see nothing wrong with that) but mom was horrified, so I caved in. You chickadees might not remember the Dark Ages before that miracle of modern science — no-run-panty hose. Lucky you. For a couple of years in junior high I had to wrestle with old-fashioned nylons and garters and it wasn’t pretty. I was never able to put on a pair of stockings without encountering a host of snags, which resulted in runners which resulted in abject misery. I was happy but I believe my mother was even happier the day the assistant principal announced that girls would be allowed to wear pants to school.

A useful hint I’ve heard from other fiberazzi is to keep an old pair of panty hose to run over the hands in order to test for any trouble spots that might cause yarn snags. Since I have not owned panty hose since 1999, I came up with a different solution. Every time I encountered a yarn with a real snagging problem I kept some aside as a snaggle ball. Each new yarn that snagged even worse than the current snaggle ball would replace it.

Today, even with my superbly smooth and soft hands due to obsessive hand care and slathering of rich creams and precious home-crafted oils, I occasionally get snags when I crochet. There are yarns, evil yarns that seek out the least little nano-particles of skin on which to get hung up. Hey, there are yarns that snag on air, know what I’m saying? I still pull out and manhandle my long suffering snaggle ball before I touch any suspicious yarns.

For years the most cunning offender was Lion Brand Microspun. Many have tried to topple this grandaddy of all snaggers; none have succeeded until recently. The usurper wasn’t a cheap, indifferently manufactured yarn. It wasn’t an unfortunate choice made by an editor that I was obliged to live with. Nope.

At the time it earned the title, this yarn was my single most expensive purchase for personal use. I totally fell for the luscious colorway, the sheen, the elegant drape, the luxury of the 100% hand-painted silk. And to this day I have not been able to bring myself to crochet anything out of it because it snags like a S-O-B. May I present my galactic champion snaggle ball of all time: ArtYarns Silk Ribbon.

>Just a quick plug for the next Getting Loopy blogtalk radio show, live on Monday night, 9 pm eastern. Mary Beth Temple, brave girl, is hosting the gang from SFTD (Straight From Today’s Designers) who will be talking about our first collaborative effort, the book Crochet Belts From the Hip. The guest list reads like a who’s who of the crochet universe and we will all be spilling our guts if MBT has anything to say about it.

If you can’t join us live, not to worry. Immediatly after the show and forever more, that episode will be available in archive so you can hear it at your leisure. But there’s nothing like the immediacy of live talk. Hey, you can sign in and join us in the Getting Loopy chat room during the show. Or the truly intrepid may want to phone in and talk, too. But I’m warning you, with all of us bouncing around you’ll hardly get a word in. Good thing this special show is going for a whole hour. I mean, with me and MBT on the line that leaves… what… 15 minutes for everybody else. 😀

>Somewhere between home-made and hand-crafted there lies the realm of “home-crafted”. To me “home-made” hints that the product is in some way amateurish, unsophisticated, homey. “Hand-crafted” means made by the work of hands, but to me implies at least a modicum of skill and artistry, even a touch of professionalism. So I use “home-crafted” to describe some of the things I make at home with my own two hands, that often elicit one of two responses; it’s either “Where did you buy that?” or “Gee, kid, you should sell these!”.

For example, my Death By Chocolate cookies are not just any old home-made cookies (ask anyone who has eaten some). Neither are they artisanal hand-crafted sweets. They are home-crafted with pride and obsession from a recipe hybridized from Marcel Desauliniers‘ Deep Dark Chocolate Fudge Cookies from his book “Death By Chocolate” and Christopher Kimball’s Double Chocolate Cookies from Issue number 40 of Cook’s Illustrated magazine (September/October 1999). In case you were wondering, each batch of 36 calls for two and a half pounds total of three kinds of chocolate.

Another example is my home-crafted beauty products, which involve no art or skill, just the right high-quality ingredients and a bit of experimentation. I discovered I can make face gack that rivals, even out performs many pricey brands for a fraction of the cost. How easy it is to mix equal portions of commercial witch hazel with some heavenly fragrant Moroccan rosewater for a facial toner. For an eye pick-me-up, soak cotton pads with it and place on closed eyes to refresh and reduce puffiness from those hazy, crazy conference after hours marathon pajama parties. I’ve also taken a run at lip balm with varying success.

But my favorite target area for home-crafted improvement is my hands. Juggling housework, a stinky lap dog, chocolate, computer keyboard and yarn requires frequent hand washing. I’ve learned to take care of my assets by keeping my nails well groomed and applying hand cream as often as I breathe. Here’s part of my hand cream stash, call it Defense Against the Dark Arts:

As you well know, certain fibers will catch and split on anything not perfectly smooth, like stitch markers, fine hooks and needles, zipper pulls, jewelry, rough cuticles, hangnails (OUCH!) and chewed fingernails. OK, I admit I used to be a nail-biter. When I would split or break a nail, making it ragged enough to impede crochet progress, I would immediately worry at it, usually with my teeth. Bad bad bad. Today there are emery boards and tubes of Perlier hand cream scattered all over my home at any of the places I might choose to hover or land. It’s scary.

But that little glass bottle in front is my secret weapon against yarn snags. It is home-crafted cuticle oil, a mixture of jojoba, sweet almond, grapeseed and hemp seed oils with a touch of mixed tocopherols (vitamin E) and a few drops of rose essential oil. I like to keep it in roller bottles for mess-free easy application. Heck, I never knew it was necessary or desirable to fuss over your cuticles. But let me tell you, if you gently push back your cuticles when they are soft, like after showering, and then roll on some cuticle oil, then slather hand cream, you’re good to go.

I have become a cuticle oil pusher. Yup. I got several of my friends hooked on using their little roller bottles every night. You’ll know which friends right away; they’re the ones with the beautiful hands!

>I kinda gushed on MaryBeth Temple’s Getting Loopy podcast from the market preview on Thursday night (which you may hear at your leisure in archive). Obviously at the 2008 CGOA National Conference in Manchester last week one expected to see crochet. But it has never been like this. We had stellar crochet. Grand prize winning crochet. Kick-butt crochet. Slap-me-into-next-week-if-I’ve -ever-seen-anything-so-outrageously-gorgeous crochet. And I fondled it all.

The Musketeer posse, from left to right that’s Diane Moyer, me, Marty “the Crochet Doctor” Miller, Tammy Hildebrand (more about her later), and Vashti “Madame Secretary and Sexy Nurse” Braha at Professional Development Day. We all would have looked much better if it had not been our misfortune to pose in front of that Pepto pink wallpaper!

Vashti, privy to much inside information that we CGOA plebes never hear, has posted in a most comprehensive way about what made this year’s event so fresh and different. Drew “Italian Jacket” Emborsky has the best wrap-up of Professional Development Day on his Crochet Dude blog. Dee Stanziano has just put up a slideshow of 52 images from the show. From these and other sources I’m finding out all the stuff I missed even though I was there.

Here’s the thing. If you were more than six inches away from me and I was using my prescription RayBans for hair management instead of looking through them, then I didn’t actually see you. Not legally blind. Just incredibly blurry, like my photography. I know for sure that Marci and Kelly from the Elegant Ewe (thanks for hosting my book signings! wonderful as ever) were modeling their Galena and Jewel tops. I couldn’t help noticing two fabulous Lacy Dusters on Nancy (?) and Haley (?) I will totally die if I got their names wrong. (see previous post).

From the runway during the Saturday night fashion show I spotted Karen Drouin in her stunning Blue Curacao and Diane in her dramatic “flamenco” All Shawl, Pam Shore in her evening All Shawl, too. But there was a group of friends at a table W-A-A-A-Y toward the back of the hall who twirled in their All Shawls. Not a clue as to who you are. I know you were there because Dee took a picture. Please speak up so that I may mention you.

This brings me to the one crocheted garment that made my heart stop it was so cool. I had the extreme pleasure of modeling this teeny tiny dress, winner of third prize in the garment division of the first ever CGOA Design Contest, designed by the aforementioned Tammy. I swiped… uh… I mean I asked Dee’s permission to re-post this photo (that OK with you, Dee?). I wish I didn’t have my stupid hand on my hip at that moment because you can hardly see the incredible pineapples under there. I spent most of the time I was wearing this sexy little number trying to figure out how the hell she constructed it. No worries, Tammy. But it might be a good thing if you wrote up that pattern soon.

I never got a chance to thank the people behind the scene at the fashion show who made us look good and tried to make us shut up. Jacque Kurman and Melanie “The Bod” Mays were fabulous as the Mistress of the Curtain and the Wrangler of Models, respectively. There were other helpful ladies backstage but I didn’t have on my RayBans and don’t know who you are. Me sorry.

Hey, don’t be shy about entering and modeling your own crochet (or knit) stuff in these shows, really. It’s possibly even more fun in back than out front. And the audience is mighty generous with approval and applause. Unlike some of us who can’t say no, you will not have to wear anything that is too revealing unless you want to.

Just make sure of a few things before you climb the stairs and onto the runway: 1) have the correct underwear, that goes without saying, 2) hold your head high and keep smiling for all you are worth no matter what happens, even if you stumble or maybe had to rush onstage with the garment inside out, and 3) NEVER follow kids or guys.

PS. The happy group at the back of the room… that was the Fishnet Crocheters of New England chapter. I just found out from Lyn Robinson (who among other jobs writes book reviews for the CGOA, heck, she reviewed mine! Ya think I’d have remembered her. see previous post) that her group chose the All Shawl project as a way to bond through crochet. COOL!

>Lately I’ve been tempted to offer that sorry-a** excuse for not being able to remember stuff. You know… groan …. Senior Moment. But that’s not always strictly the case when I am unable to pull language, facts and memories out of my brain. It has to do with capacity.

I have reached maximum occupancy. If I want to upload more information into the storage device then I have to kick data outta there. I was at CGOA Chain Link in Manchester for eight days/seven nights and I met (and re-met!) a great many wonderful people in the course of the event. In order for me to record for today and recall at some conference in the future all those faces, names, amusing and/or embarrassing incidents, I’d be forced to forget other faces, names, amusing and/or embarrassing incidents already floating around in my head.

Case in point. A friendly and incredibly familiar face approached me to sign her book. Tripledogdangit if I could not remember her name even though I had not only met her several times before, but am an honorary member of her CGOA Guild Chapter and have twice done demos at chapter meetings. I tried to sneak a sideways look at her name badge so I could avoid the utter shame of having to ask. YIKES! She wasn’t wearing her badge, at least not where I could see it.

In hindsight I can now rationalize having forgotten her name because I had just met a dozen new faces and had to make room. But at the time I had only one option. I smiled very sweetly in my best puppy-dog way, book flap open and Ultrafine point Sharpie poised, and asked how she spelled her name. Just so I got it spelled correctly. Yeah, right. That has to be the lamest thing to say, but what was I to do? Occasionally that’s a superior ploy because some people have unusual names or spellings. HA! Imagine my chagrin when she reminds me that she is Grace. Simply Grace. Remember? HHCC Grace? Terrific Grace? All the refreshments you can eat at her chapter meetings Grace? DUH!

The totally horrifying part is that you don’t get to choose which information goes or stays. I do not understand why I still remember all the lyrics to one of my favorite recordings, “Our Day Will Come” by Ruby and the Romantics, AND I remember that the single was number one on the charts in the spring of 1963. But I couldn’t for the life of me call up that name. I’d gladly have relinquished any currently stored knowledge about meerkats or kumquats or Lamborghinis, just to have experienced the satisfaction of remembering lovely Grace.

There might be a way to de-fragment or re-shuffle the drive to squeeze out a bit more space. It might involve wine. If I figure out the process in time for the CGOA Regional in Portland I’ll let you know. If I remember.