TNNA Report Part 4

I haven't even begun to tell you about all the new books that were at TNNA. At least the covers! Most of the new ones that I wanted to see haven't been published yet, but I got to view the covers of some of them, and sneak a peak at some of the inside pictures. One book that I did get to see and coveted, but was not able to get a copy of, was Nicky Epstein's new book, Crocheting on the Edge. Nicky is a great designer, and fun to talk to. So when I got home, I checked out my local book store, and there the book was. Of course, I bought it. It's a great book with lots of good ideas for edgings.







Unfortunately, I haven't had a chance to work any of the patterns yet - I'm busy getting my classes in order for Chain Link, the Crochet Guild of America's (CGOA) national conference in Manchester, New Hampshire at the end of July. If you haven't yet, check out the web site
www.knitandcrochetshow.com
to see the entire list of crochet and knit classes, and all the other great events that are going on at the same time. Especially the Yarn Marketplace.

TNNA Report Part 3

If you've never been to a TNNA trade show before, just imagine you are in a HUGE needlework store, with aisles and aisles of yarn and needlework supplies. Such a huge store, it would take you days to walk up and down every aisle and look at all the goodies! Imagine you can touch and feel and pet the yarns to your heart's content. But you can't buy any to take home with you! So it's a bit frustrating, especially when you see a yarn that you simply fall in love with, you simply MUST have! That's how I felt when I visited the Plymouth Yarn Booth. JoAnne took me around, and showed me all their new yarns. She knows I love Fantasy Naturale, and she had a big surprise for me! A new yarn, Fantasy Linen. Yes, Fantasy Linen! It's 72% mercerized cotton, 11% linen, and 17% rayon. It's machine washable and dryable, and comes in skeins of 130 yards. And great, soft colors. Unfortunately, I couldn't get a sample to try at the show, but later that day I ran into the two women from my local yarn shop who were scoping out the new yarns and needlework supplies. I suggested (strongly) that they go to the Plymouth Booth and look at the Fantasy Linen so that they can recommend it to the owner! I wanted to have this wonderful yarn available locally. I know it's going to be a big hit!

Then, this past weekend, I went to the beach, and stopped in to Coastal Crafts in Atlantic Beach. They have all sorts of crafty things there, and yarn! And a lot of Plymouth yarns. And they had Fantasy Linen! So, of course, I had to buy a couple of skeins to try. This is what the yarn in the skein looks like:










And this is what it looks like when crocheted in a stitch pattern:



It has great stitch definition, it's soft, drapes well, and if you look at a close up (double click the picture) you can see a bit of linen threads sticking out. So it looks like linen, feels like cotton, and crochets like a dream!

Check out the Plymouth web site for more information about the yarn. (And ask your local yarn shop owner to stock it!)

TNNA Report Part 2 continued

As I promised - here's the picture of the swatch I worked up, using the S hook that I got from BagSmith, and 5 strands of Plymouth Fantasy Naturale. I love the 5 multicolored strands together! If you double click on the picture, it will get bigger, and you can see the great stitch definition.

TNNA Report Part 2

I am a collector of hooks - my basic philosophy is that one can not have too many crochet hooks! So when I saw the Bagsmith booth, and the large (they call them "extreme") knitting needles, I stopped to talk. I wanted to know if they were making "extreme" hooks. The answer was Yes! I just HAD to have one or two. And at the end of the show, I got to buy 2 of them, an S (17mm) and a U (25mm). If you go to BagSmith you'll be able to see the "extreme" needles and the U hook.
In the booth, there were examples of knitted and crocheted pieces. The "extreme" tools are made to work with multiple strands of yarn. So - on the way home, I took multiple strands of Fantasy Naturale, and crocheted a little sample with them, using my new S hook. I'll take a picture, and post it tonight, and you'll see what a great fabric these hooks create!
Meanwhile, take a look at this picture:

From left to right: U hook, S hook, H hook for comparison.







And this picture:


Top to bottom: U hook, S hook, H hook for comparison.








And finally, look at the two hooks, in all their glory!









One thing about crocheting with these big hooks - if you hold your hook with a pencil grip, you probably will have to change to a knife grip to work with them. I found that it was easy to get used to that grip!

TNNA Report Part 1

I just got back from TNNA - The National Needlearts Association trade show - in Columbus, Ohio. Oh, my! What an experience! So many new yarns to swatch with. So many new gadgets to use! The trade show was three days of wandering around in the biggest yarn store ever! Except, I couldn't buy any - I just had to look, and drool, and think about all the great projects I can crochet with all the yarns.


I want to first mention the new yarn on the block - PolarKnit yarn. It's made of Polarfleece, and it is amazing! Find out more about it on the PolarKnit website. I had heard about this yarn, but had never seen it. It was debuting on the show floor, so Saturday, the first day, I went to check it out! I was in heaven! Soft, warm, gorgeous colors! What more could you ask for? I talked with Taren and Amy, and told them some of my ideas for the yarn. They gave me two balls of the orange - (great color, by the way!), and that evening, I sat in our "office", and crocheted a hat for them. With less than one ball of yarn. The next day, I brought it to them, and they got so excited. They will be offering it soon on their web site. (I have to get the pattern to them.) I also will be designing other patterns for them - keep checking their web site, and my posts, to find out more about that! And look at their Yarn Dots, and enter the contest to create your own Yarn Dot.

5 Cottons, How Do They Fare?

I'm intrigued with all the new cotton yarns that are appearing in the stores. I love working with cotton to make garments and accessories (purses and totes, especially), and I use a lot of cotton yarns when I make swatches of techniques and stitches for my crochet classes. Cotton usually has great stitch definition, so it's easy to see what I did, and my students can learn how to "read" the stitches. Many of the yarn companies are developing "organic" cotton yarns, and I hope to do some swatching and comparisons with those, soon.

One of the "staples" in the cotton yarns is what I call the "kitchen cottons", and the "big three" - Sugar 'n Cream, Peaches & Creme, and Bernat Handicrafter Cotton have been strong in that field. Lately, they have been joined by two contenders - CoolSpun Cotton, and Creme de la Creme Cotton by Coats.
"Kitchen cottons" are what I think of when I want to make dishcloths and towel, baskets, and strong tote bags. I usually don't think of these cottons when I want to make a baby afghan or sweater. They always felt a little rough to me - too rough for a garment. But - one of my crocheting buddies made a lacy sweater that I designed with another, finer cotton, and used Sugar 'n Cream to make it. And I saw a picture on-line, posted by another crocheter who made the same sweater design in Sugar 'n Cream. Both sweaters looked great! I would have never even thought to try that yarn with this design. And recently, one of my students brought in a sweater that she's crocheting for her grandson, out of - you guessed it - Sugar 'n Cream. And it looks wonderful!

In the past, when people would ask me if they could use these yarns in garments, I would say "No. The yarn is rough, and it shrinks when washed. So it's not the best yarn to use for garments or afghans that need to be washed often. Also, some of the colors fade and may bleed in the wash." (The fading part I knew from some old dishcloths I made, and anyway, I heard EVERYONE say the yarn faded. Same with the shrinking.)

Recently, though, the companies that make these yarns have come out with some great colors. I especially like the stripes, but all the colors are wonderful! And the yarn is inexpensive. And lots of times, on sale. And crocheters love a bargain. More and more people were asking me about the yarns. So...... I decided to see for myself whether the yarns would shrink. And how they would "feel" after being washed.

I happen to have a little (okay, not so little - and growing all the time) stash of these yarns. I had a skein of each of them in white, and that's what I used. (I didn't want to do this experiment using different colors of the yarns. I wanted all variables, that I could control, to be the same.) I crocheted the swatches using the same hook (some hooks, even if they have the same size marked on them, are sometimes different.) I used the same pattern, and the same number of stitches and rows. I washed the swatches together, in a washing machine filled with cold water. I dried them together, also. So most of the variables were controlled. The one thing I couldn't control was my "mood" - whether I was relaxed or tense, or thinking about something else. And mood does tend to influence gauge. So even though the swatches were worked in the same pattern, and had the same number of rows and stitches in each row, the stitch gauges and swatch measurements were different.
This is a picture of the 5 swatches before I washed them. You can see how different their sizes are.
From left to right, top row first:
Row 1: CoolSpun Cotton, Bernat Handicrafter Cotton
Row 2: Sugar 'n Cream, Creme de la Creme
Row 3: Peaches & Creme



A couple of things that I thought were interesting about these yarns: Sugar 'n Cream, Peaches 'n Cream, and Bernat Handicrafter all felt like they were the same worsted weight yarn. CoolSpun felt softer, and Creme de la Creme felt as if it were a little less than worsted weight. You can see from the picture, though, the CoolSpun swatch was smaller, even though it felt like worsted weight yarn. The Creme de la Creme yarn was the largest swatch, even though it felt like dk or light worsted weight yarn.



Then, I washed the swatches. All together, in my washing machine, in cold water. First, though, I knotted the tails with 1 - 5 knots, so I could tell the swatches apart! The picture shows that the relative sizes stayed the same, but the measurements did change.
1. CoolSpun Cotton went from 6.5" x 6" to 6.25" x 5.75"
2.Bernat Handicrafter went from 6.75" x 6.25" to 6.5" x 5.75"
3. Sugar'n Cream went from 7" x 6.5" to 6.75" x 6"
4. Creme de la Creme went from 7.5" x 6.5" to 7" x 6"
5. Peaches & Creme went from 7" x 6.5" to 7" x 5.75"

You can see from the above measurements, that the Creme de la Creme swatch was the largest, and shrunk the most - 1/2" in both directions. Peaches & Creme only shrunk in length, not width. CoolSpun Cotton shrunk .25" in each direction, and the other two - Sugar'n Cream and Bernat Handicrafter shrunk .25" in width and .5" in length.



Next, I put the swatches in the dryer. On a regular cycle - one I would use for cotton. But whenI took them out I could feel that they were not completely dry - so I pulled on their edges a little, and measured them.
1. CoolSpun - dried - 6.25" x 5.75" - same measurements as before drying.
2. Bernat Handicrafter - dried - 6.25" x 6.25" - small in width, larger in length than when wet, (it went back to it's original length.) This yarn was very easy to stretch and block.
3. Sugar'n Cream - dried - 6.75" x 6.25". I was able to get another 1/4" in length when I pulled on the edges. It was also easy to stretch and block.
4. Creme de la Creme - dried - 7" x 6" - same measurements as before drying, and still 1/2" smaller in width and length.
5. Peaches & Creme - dried - 6.75" x 5.75" - same measurement in length, but shrunk a 1/4" in length when dried.

Conclusions:
All these yarns will shrink a little when washed. CoolSpun Cotton, and Sugar'n Cream shrunk the least.
All of these yarns got noticeably softer when they were washed and dried, and I think would be soft enough for a baby blanket or a garment.
These yarns are interchangeable when the gauge is not really important to the design. However, each swatch was a different size, and even 1/4" difference in a 5" swatch, multiplied by 8 (for a 40" finished chest measurement) creates a 2" difference - which could make the garment too big or too small. So, be aware when switching yarns that not all "kitchen cottons" are alike!

The Crochet Doctor is In

BIG NEWS!
Many of my students, designer friends, and teacher friends, have asked me to do this for a loooooooong time. :-) I finally did it! I have a new blog (don't worry, I'll still keep up with this one!). The new blog is TheCrochetDoctor, and that's just what I'll try to do - answer your questions, give you some "how-to's", and help you fix what "hurts".
If you have any questions for The Crochet Doctor, you can email me at: thecrochetdoctor@aol.com, or post your questions at The Crochet Doctor blog.

(And, in case you wondered, the Doctor title is legit. I do have a Ph.D.)