Crochet Design: What Got Me Started

Three cosmic forces (to be divulged in three separate blog entries) caused me to stop putting off designing in 2004 and to start really living! I had dreamed of designing professionally ever since I learned to crochet as a child but the dream remained far-off and misty for decades. The first of these forces was the internet: specifically, 3 designers' websites that fascinated me back in 2004 or so. I visited their sites often, hungry to see their next crochet creations. They are:

1. Jennifer Hansen of Stitch Diva. Back then she had a riveting new vision of how tunisian stitches can look; she also had this jacket that intoxicated me with its sexy shaping in a kind of Edwardian style (one of my all-time favorite fashion periods). But even just her swirl pillow thrilled me. When I finally met her at a Stitches conference, I was in awe and babbled incoherently. Luckily Jennifer doesn't remember it.

2. Josi Hannon Madera. Back then her website was called Weirdmirror. She too did stylishly sexy really well. Her crocheted skirts were unlike any I'd seen in the old '60's-'70's needlework magazines I collect, in fact I don't know if I even seriously thought of crochet for skirts until I saw hers. One of them was a swirly skirt that has since gotten raves on various crochet discussion lists such as Crochet Partners. Thanks to Kim Guzman I recently learned that Josi overhauled her website. She has a book, In the Loop, in the works but at one point she said that the new website is taking the place of the printed book plans; all of the patterns that would have been in the book will be available at the site. Later I found this; Amazon says publication date is May 2007.
Here's a photo of her wearing a pretty amazing hat with matching scarf.

3. Teva Durham. I spotted Teva's name in an Interweave Knits magazine back in 2005 I believe. I googled her and found a whole treasure trove of rebelliously superchunky crochet stitches. It had the effect on me of a kind of manifesto! I wanted more! more! but the site languished and then her Loop-d-Loop book of knit designs came out and I feared that she had merely flirted with crochet. That was then; now I'm keeping eyes peeled for her forthcoming Loop-d-Loop Crochet book!