About Me

UPDATE! The new"About Me" page is at my newly redesigned website.

(Below is the older version.)

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As of 2004, I'm a full-time professional crochet thinker and tinkerer. I produce industry-standard crochet patterns, classes, articles, and other materials to promote crochet as many things: an art, hobby, learning tool, and practical medium. At first, 100% of my designs were produced for other publishers' books, magazines, and websites. This DesigningVashti blog dates from that time. It started out as a simple online portfolio.

Since about 2008 I've been moving toward publishing nearly 100% of my designs myself. This is where my new DesigningVashti yarn and pattern website comes in, in tandem with this blog. At the https://designingvashti.com/ website you can shop for my yarns, crochet hooks, kits, and instantly downloadable crochet patterns designed by me -or- by my friend, Doris Chan, and explore my helpful articles, archives, schedule of events, and more. If you'd like to know more about me, see the About Vashti page at my site.

If I were you, the first thing I'd do is sign up for my newsletter (it's free and is emailed monthly). It's the best way to find out everything DesigningVashti-related: when I add new patterns to my site, post a sale, blog, teach, etc. You're also likely to learn something new and inspiring about crochet, because I try to write about what I don't see others writing about crochet. The Vashti's Crochet Inspirations Newsletter now has its own Facebook page. 

Weightless Tunisian Stole

...And how stretchy Slip Stitch
 crochet ribbing is on Eva Shrug!

My primary goal is simply to see crochet do things I haven't already seen it do. For example, I'm inordinately pleased with how weightless Weightless is and how airy Aery Faery is. The Lovepod Boa is a souvenir I brought back from fairyland. (See "Storybook Pages" below.)

Lovepods closeup

I wish I could display these in every yarn shop. In person, I thrill to the wonderstruck looks on the faces of those who haven't seen crochet like this. For the past few years I've scrambled to develop the photography skills to adequately capture ethereal qualities possible with crochet.

It's important to me to help correct existing perceptions of crochet; seems it's seldom perceived accurately or fairly. Maybe because it's relatively young as hand-created fabrics go; or maybe it isn't and we don't have enough information to know for sure. There are probably as many theories as there are people who puzzle over why crochet is blithely misperceived and chronically underestimated.

The single most underestimated crochet stitch would have to be the slip stitch! And yet, some of the slinkiest, butter-pat-meltingest fabric I've created with my own hands is slip stitch fabric. Slip stitches are also responsible for the stretchiest tube scarf I've ever crocheted (Mr. Stretchy). It's so stretchy that it stretches open to wear as a hood or collapses lengthwise into a long scarf.

Digital publishing is so important for crochet. A great illustration of this is the kind of crochet designing Doris Chan is so well known for: top-down, seamless in the round construction. It's a process of sculpting a flattering 3-dimensional garment from the very start. The way the stitches flow from the crochet hook results in a garment with fluid drape that flows over any body shape like a waterfall.

I feature Doris Chan's crochet patterns on my website because Doris and I can add the online resources that help to make these amazing crochet designs more accessible to more crocheters.

Happy crocheting!

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Hi there! It's now 2016. I've read through the above, and it's still accurate. 

To make room for my YARN tab, I've removed the "Storybook Pages" tab. Here's what it said (the part in bold is still true today):

About Storybook Pages

My Storybook Pages are a new kind of blog post. Sure, each page is about one of my crochet designs, which is not in itself new for this blog, but for me as the writer and as a reader of many blogs, it's new. (As the designer, this is the stuff I usually keep in my head.) 

A daily life of crochet design and pattern publishing is my fairytale existence. Each design released to the public is like a character in a fantasy story. Each design has its own destiny, sometimes seen from 'birth,' other times inscrutable until it makes its way in the larger world. Some are princes and princesses born in a castle, others work hard for a living in or out of the castle. And some are visitors from other planets, time warps, and dimensions of reality :-)

So, I experience each Storybook Page as being a biography page of a storybook character complete with links to the 'person's' online scrapbook items. As I write, I see one of those giant gilded books that one sees in fairytales. (Fairy godmothers tend to have them on hand for special spells. Sometimes I think of a crochet pattern as a kind of magic spell.) 

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To introduce the first Storybook Page (on the Weightless Stole) I originally ended with:

This fantasy has been with me for weeks, as I fall asleep at night and when the thought comes, "I need to blog more" LOL.