Form adds Function: Free Crochet Patterns

Posted on March 11, 2011 by dorischancrochet

UPDATE: The free patterns are now all gathered on this separate page. I have to make room in the sidebar for other cool stuff soon.

~Doris

This blog theme really works for me. It is clean, easy to read, professional looking without being stuffy, and has a few useful doo-dads… thingies… widgets… that help me point you to cool stuff. Dang it if I could never figure out how to accomplish these things at Blogger. Could be I didn’t try hard enough there, but if you have to work so hard at something that’s supposed to be fun, what the frack!

So last night I floundered my way through a few WordPress tutorials and discovered that this theme let’s you put a customizable blogroll widget on the sidebar. That would have been gobbledy gook to me a couple of days ago. I’m guessing that normal peoples’ list of links (blogroll) would include their friends’ blogs, the sites they visit, whatever. But the blogroll can actually support any kind of links you want. HMMMM.

So last night, more accurately this morning at 25 or 6 to 4, I had the brainstorm to locate, grab and post the links for every one of my crochet designs that is currently being offered as a free pattern download. While not blogs, these are sort of my friends, huh?

Finding the links was pretty straightforward. Most of the free designs of mine are from NaturallyCaron.com, crocheted in the yarns Spa and Country, or at the Caron site and done in Caron Simply Soft. A few are from Lion Brand Yarn (be advised that they make you sign up and sign in before you can download the goods). Other sources are Tahki, Coats, Craft Yarn Council of America, Knitting Daily TV, Michaels and Ravelry.

What was not so simple was providing the images in the right sizes. This is what has taken me all day today. And even though I’ve stopped obsessing over these images, it still bugs me that I can’t get them all the same size when they’re running down the sidebar in a line. Guess I’ll have to go ingest and digest another tutorial before it’s looking perfect. Yeah, right. In another life…

Meanwhile, please help yourselves to the free patterns linked through my shiny new sidebarblogrollwidget. And while you are surfing around the net, if you spot any more of my work that’s a free pattern, drop a comment to this post and let me add it to the pile.

One more thing. The best way to view ALL of my crochet designs in one place is Ravelry.com, the awesome free site for all fiber arts. Simply join Ravelry if you aren’t yet a member, and connect with me there (dorisjchan). What you want to view is Doris Chan Design Pages.

Thanks and enjoy!

Moving… Maybe

Posted on March 9, 2011 by dorischancrochet

Hey Readers,

I think my blog may find a new home here at WordPress. Stay connected as Doris Chan: Everyday Crochet undergoes some construction.

Congratulations to all who have followed the breadcrumbs from the old home at Blogger. Please update your bookmarks and whatever so you will land here next time. Appreciate your visits.

And welcome to those who just stumbled onto this place for the first time. You can disregard the previous two paragraphs!

>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!

Link

>Have I mentioned that one of the perks of being a crochet designer is that I never have to match any other crocheter’s gauge? Given that I design the project, make the sample garment and write the pattern, I am allowed the luxury of setting the gauge. I never realized how empowering it has become being the one to dictate the number of inches per a specific count of stitches or stitch pattern repeats. It tends to make one unspeakably smug and self-righteous. Can’t match my stated gauge using the exact same yarn? Too bad. Want to substitute another yarn? Good luck with that!

All of it, every single fracking hubris-laden moment of my designing career, has returned to bite me in the butt. This month I have promised to release the next design for my independent pattern line, DJC2: Tank Girl. I started working on Tank Girl not that long ago while the Northeast was still in the grip of stinging winter cold, snow and ice. At the time it seemed like a good idea to offer Tank Girl in a warmer, cozier fiber as a layering vest. So the design began with the wonderful yarn in hand, Spud & Chloe Fine, a fingering weight blend of superwash wool and silk that probably makes awesome socks, too. And, for fun, I also sampled a tank in Kollage Sockalicious, which is a softer, plumper yarn but worked perfectly to the same gauge.

Sample in DMC Senso, fine gauge

The universe being what it is, a gang of cosmic forces kept me from completing Tank Girl right away. So now the seasons are threatening to change and think I should switch gears, stay ahead of the curve and make my tank samples more spring/summer-like. I tossed the stash looking for substitute fingering weight yarns in cotton or blends with cotton, linen, bamboo, whatever would work to gauge and be kid-friendly, washable and durable. I discovered that there aren’t a lot of choices for comfortable, easy-care yarns in this weight class, at least not to be found in this house. So I amassed a few that came the closest and swatched them all.

Imagine my dismay when none of my intended swaps would work to gauge, partly due to the fact that wool and animal fiber yarns have some give or stretch, whereas cotton and other plant fibers have none. Also, most animal fibers have some surface texture and stick-to-itself qualities that many plant fibers do not. Whatever the reasons, I found I could get the cotton/plant yarn swatches to match either stitch gauge or row gauge but not both. I switched hook sizes. I switched hook styles. I wound and rewound balls in case the tension off the skeins was making any difference. I cursed, I prayed. I did everything except crochet standing on my head and still I could not get any of the non-wool, warm weather choices to match my own gauge.

What I swatched:

DMC Senso, a soft blend of microfiber and cotton that is listed as a Size 3 crochet thread. Not a thread, trust me. It is a lovely fingering weight yarn and is terrific for fashions.
Aunt Lydia’s Size 3 Crochet Cotton, not as soft but workable.
Red Heart Lustersheen, a cabled acrylic fingering weight, very soft, a better color range than the cotton threads.
Elsebeth Lavold Hempathy, a sportweight blend of hemp, cotton and rayon; not as fine as the above, but would make a terrific spring tank.
Tahki Cotton Classic Lite, a sportweight mercerized cotton in awesome colors, but a touch heavier than all of the above.

DMC Senso, Spud&Chloe Fine, Tahki Cotton Classic Lite Swatches

I also tried a few fingering weight yarns that I’d be loathe to use for kid wear. Fine gauge silk and fine gauge linen. Still no joy. Looking at the swatches this way, it doesn’t seem as though there’s much difference, but when the gauge is multiplied over the width and length of a garment, it really gets messed up.

Tahki Cotton Classic (pink), Kollage Sockalicious (blue)

Elsebeth Lavold Hempathy (green), Spud&Chloe Fine (pink)

My solution? Heck, if the yarn won’t come to the gauge, then re-tool the gauge to fit the yarn. This would not be possible in traditional pattern publishing where space is a limiting factor. We don’t worry about word count in download land, which leaves me free to offer as many sets of instructions in as many gauges and variations as necessary to cover the bases for the range of yarns you might want to use.

It’s going to be a crap-ton of work, but worth the extra pages, trust me. Barring any unforeseen shifts in the universe, you should be able to find DJC2: Tank Girl, a seamless, lacy layering vest sized for girls, tweens and teens, in a couple of weeks at www.designingvashti.com.

>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. 🙂