The Merits of Owning 10-Skein Bags

Today in the Crochet Partners forum someone wondered what would be a good amount of yarn to buy if one sees it for a good price but one doesn't have a project in mind. What a great question! Below is my reply, with some additional thoughts.
(Pictured: a delicious 10-ball box of Coats Opera #5 thread)

If I can, I'll buy the number of skeins it takes to make a full mill "bag", if I can get the yarn in its original bag. Yarn companies ship most yarns divided neatly into clear bags. Many of the yarns sold in local yarn shops (LYS) come in 10-skein bags. Some yarns carried in craft chains might be shipped in 3-skein bags or 6-skein bags. I've found that if I buy a 10-skein bag at a yarn shop or online, there are lots of benefits:

- If I change my mind down the road about using the yarn, it's very easy to sell a full 10-skein bag (in its original bag) on the internet, even long after it has been discontinued. Occasionally a LYS will take it back for store credit.

- An intact bag of 10 makes a great gift for a yarn lover!
(10-ball bag of Rowan Linen Drape at left; click pic to see the official label on the bag)

- It's easy to figure out in your head the total yards you have: 10 x yards in each ball = a good amount for a sweater (note that depending on the design, there might only be enough yarn for mid-length sleeves.) So, say each ball has 125 yards, you know that a 10-ball bag gives you 1250 yards total. Ten skeins gives me enough to experiment with some and still have enough to make a summer top, shrug, wrap, hat and scarf, tote, throw pillows, multiple gifts, or a matching set of something.

- It comes home in its own storage bag! 10-ball bags stack on each other well and slide under beds perfectly. The balls stay new-looking because they don't tumble around; instead they're packed neatly like sardines in their mill bags. I'm making two sweaters right now, both with stash yarns that I bought in 10-ball bags about 5 years ago. The yarn is so fresh it's like I bought it yesterday!

- The dye lot is automatically the same for each ball.

- It helps the LYS because they're not left with stray skeins of a dye lot. By the way, if you want to special order a yarn from a LYS, ordering 10 balls of it makes it very easy for the shop.

- Given these benefits, if you find 10-ball bags of a discontinued yarn, the closeout price is a true bargain. Consider my latest acquisition: Artful Yarns Fable, $55 for the bag. That's $5.50 per ball of a premium pima cotton & silk blend, all one dye lot, pristine condition; 184yards ea. = 1840 yds total!

Many of these benefits might also be true for the 3-ball and 6-ball bags at chain stores.
The Caron Pizazz at right came in 3-ball bags.

Podcast Tonight! Join Me!

My good friend Mary Beth Temple created the Getting Loopy call-in podcast show a few months ago and has already built up a valuable archive of shows that you can listen to anytime. In my previous post I mentioned how she ramped everything up a notch by podcasting live from the conference!

Tonight, many of the designers who created the Crochet Belts from the Hip book together, including myself, will be on the show tonight getting all loopy about designing.

If you've already downloaded your raw, uncensored copy of the book, you'll know what I mean when I say, "Join us at the designer's table tonight" from 9-10pm while we're live. (If you can't make it, it will be archived and accessible immediately after the show.)

This CGOA Conference Broke the Mold!!

Have returned from Manchester NH to report that Chain Link 2008 (a.k.a. Knit and Crochet Show) was like no other conference ever!

pictured: Yvonne Tate (bklynvonne) handing out Ravelry buttons

Here's a list of firsts:

- CGOA's Design Contest was a great success! 115 high caliber entries means oh yes, we'll be doing this again. Thanks to Treva McCain for all of her hard work to make it happen.

- We had a record number of door prizes. For PD Day alone, every attendee (about 145) won at least 1 door prize. PD Day was the best ever so I'll have to blog more about that. (Pictured: Myra Wood and Jennifer Hansen in foreground; behind them, Robyn Chachula, presenters Jean Leinhauser and Rita Weiss, and at the podium, Jane Schwartz and Drew Emborsky.)

- In addition to creating this year's PD Day, Drew took over the job of emceeing the fashion show from the illustrious Lily Chin this year. (Drew, your Italian bespoke emcee jacket was spectacular.) He did a wonderful job, which freed up Lily to do some fabulous modeling on the runway.

- New 30-minute afternoon fashion show in the Market--therefore Drew's managing and emceeing of it is an automatic first, plus, Tammy Hildebrand agreed to model!

- Another fashion show first is the pre-show training generously provided by ex-model Melanie Mays. Another first I guess is that I didn't enter any of my own designs in the fashion show(s) this time. I modeled other people's, such as Annette Stewart's fun flouncy miniskirt (a contest entry).

- One other fashion show first is the way everyone just cleared out after the show on Saturday night. We didn't even have our usual post-show design lab!

- New CGOA Director Lorraine Lucas is a guild member-at-large, so the hobbyist members who are not in the business of selling yarn or designs now have a representative on the board. I found out that Lorraine is just the person you want to spend hours in a coffeehouse with before getting drenched by torrential rains on the way back to the conference. Wish I had a photo of that.

- Some other first-time attendees besides Lorraine: Carrie Sullivan, Amy Shelton (Crochetville admin), Renee Barnes (CrochetRenee'), Kimberly McAlindin, Jerry Rigdon, Jack Blumenthal, and Jess and Casey of Ravelry. New-to-me at the conference were Kim Guzman, Kristen TenDyke, and Gloria Tracy! New-to-many (but a sweet reunion for me) was Jenny King! In fact, we had the highest number of pre-registered attendees ever.

- We added a Committee Meet & Greet to the Members' Annual Meeting, and many chairpersons instantly found new volunteers for their committee this way.

- The Thursday night Market preview was hoppin'!! I think it was a good move to have Mary Beth Temple doing her live Getting Loopy podcast from the show floor right at the entrance so that no one could miss it. Her daughter "LL" was the perfect assistant. I want to thank the dozens of attendees who were happy to call in to the podcast and talk with MBT for a few minutes. They were less shy than I was! I'm told it made for a record download.

Follow the conversation in Crochetville.

Read about the conference at these blogs:

Karen D Creations

CrochetWithDee

My Hooks and Needles

CrochetbyFaye

Everyday Crochet

Getting Loopy

Addicted to Alpaca

Stoneview

CrochetRenee

I especially enjoyed the conference entries at Fire Lizard Studios, which is a blog I haven't seen before.

Our New Designer-Published Book

Before I leave for the big exciting national CGOA conference thatIwouldn'tmissfortheworld I'm proud to officially announce a new kind of crochet pattern book.

NINETEEN designers rode the publishing rapids together and survived the adventure! We've learned what it's like to put together an instant-download e-book as a group, get a website for it, get it reviewed, and choose the topic for our next one. Many of us will meet up again at the conference this week so who knows what will come of that!

We call our group "Straight From Today's Designers", or SFTDonline.com.

For the book I did a "Barbed Wire Belt" in silver Jelly Yarn. I was able to include a story about the design because I'm one of the publishers. Feels good!

Don't miss Tammy Hildebrand's daughter modeling her belt!

JD Wolfe of Craft Gossip reviewed it here and Lime & Violet reviewed it here. So far, these contributors have blogged it: Angela Best of La Vonne's Knot Just Knits, Doris Chan, Robyn Chachula, Noreen Crone Findlay, Lisa Gentry, Pam Gillette of Knotty Generation, Kim Guzman of Kimane Designs, Amie Hirtes of Nexstitch,Margaret Hubert, and Marty Miller.

Color Play! Great Sites for Inspiration

(Below find the promised pic of puppy Rosebud)

At the same time that I've been researching upcoming color trends for the Trendy Crochet class, color came up in the International Freeform yahoo group. This summer I just want to play with colors. I can't name a favorite color because of how they change in combination with others. Below are my favorite links.

Colorcube has lots of color games. My favorite is "Color Scrambles" because I love competing with myself to distinguish subtle shades. See also the articles and screensavers.

Colorjack is great for sophisticated color combinations. Many interesting options.

Fun, fun, color news at the Colour Lovers Blog! Best of all, create COLORED PATTERNS!!

Wellstyled has a color wheel that is so well designed that it seemed simplistic to me at first. Then I looked closer and saw the refinements possible. Nicely designed, concise. I learned what my color combining biases are.

Colr.org uses actual random Flickr images (or others images of your choice) for real-life color schemes. It took me awhile to figure it out. Includes the ability to tag colors and if I understand correctly, the tags are communal.

Check out Lollygirl's Project Spectrum. It's not just for knitters anymore.

Lines and Colors blog has a pretty cool discussion of the color wheel and its development.

I bookmarked this list of color names because I learned such things as, I've had heliotrope (not neon yellow), olivine (not acid olive-green), and puce (not dirty caramel-chartreuse) wrong all my life! And, that I'm probably not the only one confused by "indigo" which sometimes appears as a deep herby edgy teal, and other times as a vivid violet. Check out all of the lavenders. How many people know what "zinnwaldite" looks like? Or Mountbatten pink??

And here's Rosebud, Queen of the Couch, circa 1999 (full name Rosebud Fu Fu Shen). If she could speak: "We both know that I'm not supposed to be on the couch, but I was just about to take a delicious nap, so you could waive that rule just once, right? I won't make a regular practice of it."

Rosebud was the most beautiful dog I ever had and probably the most intelligent. Also the closest thing to a tawny pet lion.

Tagged: Time to Face the Music

Doris tagged me so I can run, but I can't hide.

What was I doing 10 years ago?
That was a big year: defended a multidisciplinary thesis on "gender essentialism" so that I could graduate from New College. Succeeded in getting pregnant. Got a puppy, named her Rosebud (nope, not because of the movie). Started paying a mortgage instead of rent. Please check back for a pic of beautiful Rosebud.

Five things on my non-work to do list today:
- Make apptmts for check ups--eye, dental, general physical, blah blah blah.
- Light grocery shopping. Am craving me some fruit and a layer cake.
- Finish cleaning out a closet.
- Get just enough sun.
- Call up a long distance friend.

Snacks I enjoy:
- Cherry pie--I miss my grandmother's made-from-scratch pies. She made her own egg noodles too.
- All nuts except brazilnuts and filberts.
- Chocolate chip cookies from scratch (code for real butter, whole eggs, dark choc)
- DH's hummus

Things I would do if I were a billionaire:
- Create huge prestigious juried cash prizes for crochet design, innovation, & development, you know, like scientists have.
- Spend months at a time living abroad.
- Fund the education of girls worldwide; in some cases this has to include feeding and clothing them. Seems to me that educating women nips many socioeconomic & environmental problems in the bud!
- Create a "Stitchbrain"--a digital bank of every crochet stitch pattern in the world, totally cross-ref'd and indexed and searchable by stitch symbol sequences, clickable alternate formats (full text vs abbrevs vs symbols etc), linked to designs featuring them, zoomable & flippable & rotatable, clickable infinite colorwork combinations yes, swatch uploadability from the crocheting citizens of the planet (with gauge and fiber info). It would be beautiful and cheerful and fun and revolutionary.

Places I've lived (in reverse order):
Hollywood FL
Fairfield IA
Seattle WA (my all-time fav place)
Portland ME
Governors Harbor, The Bahamas (I really did move from the Bahamas to Maine. In autumn!)
Cambridge MA
East Troy & Mukwonago WI
Hamilton OH

Jobs I have had:
Calligrapher
Buyer/purchaser for a specialty market--fun!!
"Herb Goddess" (the title became quasi-official at a health food store)
Cashier/store clerk
French and Biology tutor at a community college
"Credit Associate" of a department store
Office Manager of a dessert company (ohhhh yes)

People I want to know more about:
I'd love to know what Pam was doing 10 years ago and all that!

CGOA, Collectible Hooks, and Dee Stanziano!

My blog posts are stumbling over themselves to be written. Now that I have updated my handout for the Trendy Crochet class that I teach every year, I can resume blogging.

An article that I wrote for Yarn Market News (May'08, page 36) about CGOA's commemorative crochet hooks has been reprinted in full here (scroll down to June 16 entry). If you don't know what "HAS" is, the article will fill you in.

It's an honor to see my article on Dee Stanziano's blog! A big thank you to the YMN editor, Karin Strom, for giving permission to reprint it, and a big hug to Dee. (Can you tell from her photo how huggable she is?)You can see the classes she'll be teaching at the CGOA conference here (scroll down to "Stanziano").

This is a great time to thank Dee also for being CGOA's Volunteer Email Correspondent for six years. If anyone had a crochet question, Dee was there to answer! But that's not all. This amazing CGOA member also moderates the Hook Collector's Group forum (this is a special group within CGOA), has a large and happily active CGOA Chapter in Connecticut, is active in a wide variety of crochet forums, and has agreed to lead one of the guild's most important committees. Not only that but her husband and kids are delightful.

If you haven't yet met Dee, attend the conference next month and sign up for one of her classes!

More TNNA Show Highlights: the PEOPLE

This is the last installment of my TNNA trilogy: photos and a name avalanche!

We have the photogenic Kristin Omdahl who wore her own beautiful designs every day of the show. Here's a great pic of Ellen Gormley (who wore her own stylish designs every day to great effect) and that's Doris Chan between Ellen and me. Doris was ready to celebrate the successful taping of her TV episode and although she couldn't wear the China Doll (see story here), the blue lace top she's wearing will show up magnificently on film.

The last two pics were taken at the fashion show. We have The Crochet Dude (Drew) and the Crochet Insider (Dora) gearing up to cheer for the 1% crochet content; and on the other side of me sat the radiant Diane Moyer, who endured my cheeky mood that night. We roomed together this year and believe me, she awakes every morning with a rosy glow and her hair looks already styled.

Steady yourself for the name avalanche: I had remarkable first-time conversations with these new friends: Sandi Wiseheart, Maggie Pace, and Clara Parkes. I treasure the quality time I got to spend with Ellen, Kristin, Amy O'Neill Houck, and Annie Modesitt, in addition to the usual suspects (Marty Miller, Jane Schwartz, Mary Beth Temple, Doris, Drew, Dora, Diane). Finally got to meet Jess and Casey and Mary-Heather! I've come to count on seeing Stitchdiva groove a conference! Can you believe Prudence Mapstone's biz trip to Columbus overlapped with TNNA for a few hours before her flight back to Oz? I wish I'd been able to get an espresso (or something) with Robyn Chachula, Kim Werker, Nancy Brown, and Karin Strom (to name a few) and don't worry, I did get espressos, but always when none of these folks was nearby. I kept wishing I could see TNNA regulars Margaret Hubert, Gwen Blakley Kinsler, Mary Jane Hall, Kathleen Greco, and Cari Clement but they couldn't make it this time. Should I list more people I loved meeting or wish that I'd met at TNNA? Because I'm afraid I'm leaving someone out. I haven't even mentioned the cool yarn shop owners I met. Nor have I really talked about the published sweaters walking the show in living breathing 3D.

Supposedly TNNA is about yarn, but it's really about the people. And the way they drape yarn all over themselves.