Sometimes it’s important to assess what you currently have going on in your life and make changes, updates, and improvements. New clothes. A new hairdo. Repaint the bedroom. Assess and downsize personal inventories.

And sometimes it’s important to realize what you have is so far outdated that it needs to be scratched and started over. “86′ed” as it’s called in the restaurant industry.

I’m down with that second option. It’s time for something new, a virtual makeover. A re-do of an old do. I’m busy planning a website re-design which will have more enhanced features. While I’m not going to spill all the beans – because I’m no mood to clean up after that kinda mess – let’s just say that I’m hoping to clean up and streamline my whole entire website to the point in which you won’t recognize it. It’s time for a good old fashioned ear lowering.

It’s on like Donkey Kong.

The Meaning of Creativity

I find it fascinating to talk with other designers and ask them what makes them tick, what drives their internal engines to create and keep creating even in the face of self-doubt and frustration. The answers I get always lean towards an insatiable desire to put to real form what they’re seeing and feeling inside.

I went to a workshop yesterday for the Day Job in which there were two speakers giving a dual presentation, one talking about linear perspective (from the point of view of an artist) and one on how the human eye perceives perspective (from a scientific point of view). Oddly enough (or maybe not so oddly as I loved science in high school), I made the greatest connection with the scientific end of the conversation when the second speaker posted a photograph of someone’s pupil from the outside looking in. [Imagine a large circle filled with bright light and all around it dark brownish-red looking muscles surround it.] It was rather eery! I felt like I had traveled to an unrecognizable world I never thought I’d see. No, really. It was quite…humbling.

Anyway, the speaker was driving home the point that the human eye sees things backwards as it’s taken in and is reflected in the brain in order to look right side up, and that the world as seen is really quite orderly and beautiful. All things made from nature are so well designed. Think of a nautilus shell, or the structure of a beetle’s body. Or even the way a line of trees appear smaller as they go back in space and yet the trees furthest away aren’t necessarily smaller than those in front.

For me I took from that conversation that the world is indeed orderly, but people and our thoughts, visions, and ideas are more chaotic, raw. Our insatiable need to design and always move forward is like a constant need to take the chaos of our daily lives and inside our brain and make order of it in the physical sense, take the orderliness of what we see in the world and reflect it back through our own senses, our own eyes.

The Creative Process

I posted a question to Twitter yesterday asking designers (knit and crochet):

“Looking through inspirational images & yarn stash to determine next project. DESIGNERS: How do you get inspired?”

I would say a lot of my designing is a reflection of my environment, of what I like. I’m a beach person by nature having grown up at the Jersey Shore. I tend to like a more subtle, subdued color palette. As such, I’ve created a lot of designs that evoke that part of my personality. My latest design is no exception.

My response to the question I posed on Twitter was that I rummage through my yarn stash to see what I currently have and find images that inspire me at the moment. I knew I wanted to make a large handbag that I could take to the beach, whose design was easy enough manipulate in order to change the size of the bag easily, if a customer desired to do it. And I wanted to play with a new fiber. I happened to have several spools of Berwick Wraphia in Oatmeal, Green, and Turquoise I had purchased a couple years ago online and that seemed to fit the profile.

I went searching online for some cool Amy Butler (love her aesthetic!) fabric on fabric[dot]com to go with the feeling of the bag (but not match it perfectly) when I found this one (shown below). Something about the playfulness of the flowers, the use of color, and the fact that it was called, “August Fields” and my birthday is in August drew my eye and I bought a yard of fabric.

I did some searching online for beach bags (regular ones, not crochet as I tend to look towards mainstream fashion first) and came across this bag which I thought was interesting. It had a knit-like appearance to it and I wondered about how that would translate to crochet. I like that the rows of stitches seemed to start at the center and radiate out and back in at the other end, creating a curved effect. I set out to mimic that effect.

In order to create the curved shape, I had to employ short rows and linked stitches (to join the short rows to the main body of the work). The bag had some stability to it but not like I had imagined. Later on in the design process, I used green wraphia and did some surface crochet to go over the portion of the bag with the short rows, adding structure to it. That solved one problem and helped along an aesthetic issue: before doing the surface crochet, the curved shape wasn’t as pronounced. Now it was.

The remainder of the design, done in turquoise wraphia, came from seeing embroidery on off-white Mexican style, beachy shirts I used to see women wear to the beach as a child.

Lastly, the name: I wanted something that took someone to a certain time and connected them with a certain feeling. Montauk is a beachy place that boasts both a casual and upscale lifestyle, and that’s what I wanted to bag to feel like: polished, fun, but functional.

And that’s how a big bag called, “Montauk” was “born.”

Tags: amy butler, bag, bamboo, Crochet, design, fabric, montauk handbag, pattern, purse

Here are some quick picture from my latest pattern release, “Montauk Handbag.” I’ve included a photo fan of the first four pages. You can see that there are a great deal of photos, illustrations, and diagrams to help the crocheter along the way. Don’t be afraid because it’s labeled “Intermediate.” I use a couple more uncommon stitches like linked stitches minimally and there are photographs to assist newbies of this technique. It’s really just a matter of sticking your hook in another spot before a stitch like a double or treble crochet is finished off.

I will be talking about the design inspiration in the next blog post.

Alas, the pictures!

Tags: berwick wraphia, Crochet, design, montauk handbag, pattern

Finally. A published pattern. FINALLY.

I’ve been sitting on this pattern for a year and a half. That’s right. You aren’t seeing things. I did say A YEAR AND A HALF. Designers are known to come up with a bevy of ideas and sit on some of them, but it’s not so usual to be near the finish line and drop a project (or in my case, all designing) so suddenly. I ceased putting out new designs when I began taking on clients (other designers) for their own graphics needs. But I was finding myself spending less and less time with crochet. And truth be told, I rarely picked up a hook during my self-imposed internment.

It’s not that I didn’t want to. I did. It’s just…there were (and have been) so many other things on my plate that something had to give. The Day Job got stressful. More of the Side Work (aka. “graphics work”) was coming in. At one point, I wasn’t sure if the wedding was going to happen. And then my step-father passed away. And then there was a wedding scheduled along with all the details that were quite time consuming. I just didn’t have room for a hook in there, physically but more so mentally.

Does anyone else feel like that? Like you can’t have a fresh perspective on new designs if so many other things are crowding your brain? That’s how I felt anyway. I tend to put everyone and everything else first and me last. That’s what I was doing. In a way, I was devaluing my own self.

I have to reference something Kim Werker said a few months ago about ‘being afraid to be awesome’ (loosely paraphrased). It’s a self-imposed roadblock that I’ve chosen to dig myself out of. Starting today.

So now that some of those things have been resolved, I’ve chosen to get back on my metaphysical “horse” and pump out some new designs, do something for mefor a change.

Tags: Crochet

Here are some more details about the wedding…which is in 4 days!

Techno-Wedding Cards & Bouquet Extras:

Larry came up with the FABULOUS idea of having our guests be able to automatically upload pictures they take at our wedding using their cameras and phone cameras. Once someone takes pictures, they just send them to a prescribed email address and they’re posted automatically in an online image gallery for everyone to see, share, print, download, whatever. The gallery is already set up so if people want to snap and upload on wedding day, it’s ready to go. Yeah, we’re a bunch of geeks.

The other items clumped into this image are for my bouquet. The top one is a picture of my step-father. I printed it out and cut the image to fit this silver trinket I bought at Michael’s for $3.00. The other is something I picked up last night. I’m thinking of adding some crystals at the bottom of the one that has Larry’s name on it. Both will be attached to my bouquet so my step-father will be walking me down the aisle, posthumously.

Tree of Wisdom:

This will replace the boring guest book that is sometimes signed but rarely re-visited after the wedding. Basically, guests can complete the sentence that’s posted on a sign next to the tree. Some of them say, “Marriage is like…,” “Always say….,” “For a Long, Loving Marriage…” (Here’s a link to the pdf of the sign. I printed it out and put it in a black picture frame). We’ve encouraged guests to say silly and ridiculous things! Once they’re written what they want, they’ll hang the card from the tree.

I bought these sandblasted manzanita branches from Nettlton Hollow and arranged them in a glass vase I bought at Michaels. You can see one of the placemats will go underneath it.

I crocheted a basket to hold bird and leaf cards I cut from heavy paper. I love the birdies!

I’m going to try to squeeze in another post before the wedding but no promises. I’m busy finishing up the loose ends. No really, I’m just about done with my version of the Trinity Lace Shrug from “Crocheted Gifts” by Kim P. Werker.

Tags: Crochet, kim werker, lace, shrug, trinity, wedding

(If you missed Part 1, here’s a link. If you want to see where they wedding will be held or check out the color inspiration for everything, check out this post.)

While I’m a fan of the importance of the larger details of a wedding – the clothes, the wedding vendor, the food – it’s the smaller details that I feel make or break a wedding. I can think of one wedding I’ve been to where all the details were attended to that made the day feel like we were a part of something unique, something special. That’s the feel I’m going for here with the planning of this wedding. It’s important to us that it feel like an extension of who we are as people. Nothing cookie-cutter allowed.

To that end, it was important to me especially that we have our hand (and say) all over every detail and even make or put together a lot of what will be seen. Additionally – if that isn’t enough of a charge – we wanted a portion of the event to be about sustainability. I felt confident that we could use and re-use a lot of what’s put together – or even sell to some other bride/bridegroom to re-use – so that we weren’t impacting the Earth. That’s why we chose the Stone House for our event. They’re big on that sustainability factor. Hopefully we’ve been able to apply what we felt strongly about in the course of planning this event.

Here’s the nitty-gritty details in no particular order:

Cocktail Table Flowers:

Instead of using regular flowers which just wilt and die, I decided early on that I’d like to use succulents. I’ve seen them used in wedding before and they’re just gorgeous. The colors, the shapes, the uniqueness. I love it all. So I set out to plant them in glass containers I purchased at Michael’s and AC Moore. With coupons, I wound up saving a bunch of money. I bought some rocks in a large bag at Home Depot for $4.00 and used them as “soil.” The gray of the rocks goes with the color palette we set out to use. Aren’t they cool?

Fans:

I found the idea of doing wedding fans online and I liked it and thought I could make my own because they’d be way cheaper and more personalized. One of the Best Gals bought 6″ tongue depressors from a medical supply store for me. I glued two of them together to increase their length. I bought Epson Matte paper (1-sided) and designed them using the image from the invites altered to include another bird. Below the birds are the names of everyone participating in the wedding and a special “thank you” to everyone for coming. What you don’t see – stoopid me because I should have taken the pic with one front and one back view – is that on the back is the menu for the day. While people are waiting for the event to start, they can peruse the food selections!

After printing out the fronts and back separately, I carefully glued the tongue depressors to the backs of each and then glued the front on top. Lastly, I cut ribbon to a certain size and tied it around the bottom of each. Some I made gray, some green:

Cones:

Another idea I found online, these wedding flower cones will hold some of the Billy Button (crespedia) flowers I purchased on Whole Blossoms. They’ll hang from the aisle chairs in the first three rows to designate “Family Only.”

All the paper was purchased at AC Moore. The yellow paper has a gold, textured design on it which I liked. What you can’t see well enough is that the gray paper is wedding paper – it has hearts, linked wedding bands, and the words, “I will marry my friend,” “2 become 1,” and “The one I Love, Live for, Laugh with Forever and Ever” all over it. I bought a $2.00 pair of fancy edging scissors from Walmart and trimmed two sides of the yellow paper, which was cut at 81/2″. The gray paper was cut for 8″. I glued two sides of the paper down on the inside and rolled the cone and adhered the open edge with hot glue. Cut some holes in the front and back with a hole punched, weave in a long ribbon, and done!

I love these little Billy Button flowers!

More to come. There’s just too much to fit into one post!

Tags: billy buttons, crespedia, Crochet, succulents, wedding

Sorry to leave you “flat” as we used to say when I was 10 years old. I’ve been so busy with wedding plans that I haven’t had time to pop in here and write. But let me catch you up on all things wedding (with some crochet too!).

I decided early on that I was going to be the “anti-bride,” as I was calling it, meaning I wasn’t interested in doing anything that’s typically done at weddings. Not to offend anyone, just that all of that stuff is not in my taste (nor Mr. NexStitch’s). Even our 4 1/2 year long engagement isn’t typical! Neither of us wanted a chicken dance, bouquet throwing, cake cutting, tuxedo wearing, garter belt getting via teeth kind of wedding. No way Jose’. My intention was to put on the “anti wedding,” to show everyone that all that stuff isn’t missed when it doesn’t creep up into the  schedule of events – shoot, I don’t even want a schedule on that day! Our plan is simple: get married and have a great party with excellent food and only close friends and some family. Oh, and we want to do it on a smaller budget and load the day up with lots of DIY touches, to personalize it and save money. Tall order.

If you saw my previous post, you saw that I was going with the bright yellows and greens with a splash of gray in moderation. That’s been carried out in the attire.

First up, the “Best People” (we’re not having a best man or maid of honor). The ladies will wear jCrew Cotton Cady Sydney dresses. My friend Nancy works for jCrew and got us a discount on the dresses ($157 per dress). Both of the female “Best People” are going to rock these super cute Anne Klein Hoola Sandals in a slightly paler shade of green (on sale at Marshalls and on Amazon, so about $40 a pair):

Mr. NexStitch is going to rock the jacket and pants from this slim cut Alfani suit with a nice white shirt that has a faint white on white stripe in it, black shoes and a black belt. Total cost for his outfit: $310 including tailoring of the coat. The best guys will wear gray pants and a white shirt, no jacket, same shoes and belt. The suit was 50% off at Macy’s!:

I picked out, for myself, an off-white dress from BCBG that has a similar off-white on off-white stripe in it which is most evident at the hem. I LOVE this dress because it’s simple. No beading. No glitter. No nothing (except a sash around the waist) Dress cost: $370 including 2nd-day air shipping:

For shoes I picked out a rockin’ pair of high, high heels by Carlos Santana. They’re faux crocodile, baby and only $80!:

And just today, as I was doing my tour of the Internets, I came across a new design from Annie Modesitt in the new book called, “Crocheted Gifts” by Kim P. Werker. The design is called, “Trinity Lacy Shrug” which I immediately fell in love with. I had planned to design my own shrug to wear on wedding day but with all these other details I’m taking care of, I just feared not having time to put together something I liked. This was the evident solution. I’ve decided on using Bouton d’Or’s Surya yarn in Soleil (yellow) to match the shoes ($18 a skein for 3 skeins plus the cost of the book = $85:

Details I’m still deciding on: jewelry and handbag. I’ve picked out a handbag I like but it’s $95. Not sure if I want to spend that much now, although I love the bag and would use it otherwise:

The last detail is the jewelry. My mother would like me to wear something of hers but I want to wear a green beaded necklace (not yet determined). We’ll see how that goes.

Next blog post? More details related to the wedding space (and more crochet to follow!). Stay tuned.

Tags: BCBG, Crochet, crocheted gifts, dress, jcrew, kim p. werker, wedding

Following on the heels of my big announcement, I’ve sent out all but 2 invites so I guess it’s safe to share what they look like. I started out by going online to see what’s going on in the world of weddings these day. Green Wedding Shoes provided endless inspiration for real weddings, some of which are very non-conventional, which I love. I had my eye set on a bright yellow as being one of the colors but I was unsure what to pair it with. I wanted to keep it modern and playful since the venue is modern. And the location for the wedding ceremony will have a lower-intensity yellow in the background:

We’re using their Pre-Function room for the cocktail hour and reception afterwards. This room also has touches of the same yellow and a darker grey for the carpet on the slightly higher level. The first two shots are in the waiting area outside of this room and the last shot is the actual space we’ll be in:

As awesome as this space is, it’s been challenging to think about what to add to it to make it feel like a party. At the moment, I think perhaps some flowers and the people. Really, it’s an awesome space that speaks for itself.

Now about the invites…

So I wound up going to Michael’s and picking out some ribbon that I liked. The initial plan was to have the theme colors be yellow and green OR yellow and gray. Through the process, I decided that all three would work since one is a neutral (I apologize for these pictures in advance as they’re just quick snapshots from my iPhone):

From there, I devised the idea that I wanted there to be cute birds on the invites. I had found a pattern on iStockPhoto a longggg time ago that I adored and wound up coming across again. I used the bird and flower from that, tweaking it a bit. Keep in mind I had a week from conception to mailing to get these out the door. Normally, I’d just create my own illustrations from scratch, but time was of the essence! I decided pretty early on that I wanted it to be like a flip book. Here’s what I came up with:

Of course I took that one before I trimmed the bow…

For the map, I took a screen capture of two maps, one broad and one local. I brought them into Adobe Illustrator and created my inspired map on top of the originals. For the road signs, I Googled sign images and then did the same as I did for the maps. The roads I drew by hand.

The beauty about the way I designed these cards is that there was enough room to make the “thank you” cards fit on the same page, so my cards are all ready to go! You can see a shot of those on the right side of this picture:

Now, onto the wedding fan programs.

Tags: wedding

It’s hard to believe that over 4 years ago, Larry proposed to me. It was our 5th anniversary and we were headed out to dinner at our favorite (dearly departed) restaurant, “Novita” (pronounced, No-vee-tah). I was looking forward to their Chilean Sea Bass dinner I so often got there. Melt in your mouth fish with an incredible bed of mashed potatoes and olives surrounded by a delicate broth. Hmmm, I can still taste it. I know I spent the whole ride over there in anticipation.

Needless to say when we exited the car and started making our way to the door, I was blindsided by a large, fast-moving, talking banner with the words, “Amie Will You Marry Me?” written across it. It turned out that our best couple friends were wielding that banner from the other end of the restaurant parking lot. And for those of you who weren’t there, and that’s everyone reading this, I present you, “It’s Not Upside Down, Is It?”:

So fast forward 4 1/2 years later and we still haven’t sealed the deal. Needless to say, it’s bothered me this whole time. I mean, we’ve (I’ve) talked about it from time to time but never really fleshed it out. Well, maybe that’s not true. We did go see one place late last summer. And then again this past December we contacted the place we’re having the wedding at to ask about pricing. But it wasn’t until my recent loss that I realized we’d waited too long. About a week after my step-father passed away, I decided that we weren’t getting any younger, and neither were our family and friends and that we just had to move ahead and do this thing.

SO, WE’RE GETTING MARRIED!

It’s going to be a very simple, authentic, DIY wedding. Details to follow in upcoming posts, but yes, there will be some crochet somewhere in this wedding mix.

Tags: wedding

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted. I think I just needed some time away alone with my thoughts. It’s been an emotional two months to say the least. I’ve kept most of my babbling to a 140 character count over at Twitter. Less is more these days. I do promise though, with the summer coming up, that I’ll post more since I’ll be home more.

I just want to take a moment to thank everyone who posted here or sent me emails in regards to my step-father passing. I can’t begin to express how comforting your words were to me at that difficult time. I cried, I smiled, and cried again at each post or email sent.

I think work immediately became my coping mechanism, keeping me so busy that I didn’t have time to crawl too far into my own head space. Between my two clients, Mary Beth Temple and Marty Miller (new client) and my crazy day job, I had enough things to do to occupy my time. Both clients were planning on selling patterns wholesale at TNNA, with Mary Beth signing her latest and greatest book, “DIY Afghans” at the Leisure Arts booth. And both had a bunch of patterns as well as other graphics needed for the show. At the height of the workload, I was clocking 18 hour work days on weekdays and long hours on the weekends since there was a ton to do.

Mx2

Marty approached me because she was interested in selling patterns wholesale. She wanted a simple pattern layout using Carolina Blue as the main color inspiration. It was important that her pictures and important text be near the top of the page so they’d be seen if they were being stocked on shelves in an LYS. This is what I came up with:

Marty also needed a logo to accompany the patterns. She wanted “Mx2,” meaning the letter “M” performed twice, as in “M” being done twice in a crochet pattern – the two M’s standing for Marty Miller. I thought it was a brilliantly clever idea. She also said she’d like it to look like it had been written as a crochet pattern. After two unsuccessful attempts at making what she wanted (I either went too fancy with the chosen crochet symbol or it wasn’t cool enough), I came up with this:

I was really happy with this effort. It utilizes a few of the colors from the layout, It’s fun and simple, like the layout. And I think it reads well. The breakthrough in the design came when I made the “2″ look like a double crochet symbol. It related well to the “M” and thus a logo was born.

So now that the chaos of dealing with two clients with the same deadline is over, I have a new deadline for something very important happening in August that I will share with you shortly. This’ll be something else that occupies my time for the summer, something I’ve been waiting for during the last 4 1/2 years. And yes, it involves a little crochet.

Stay tuned!

Tags: Crochet, design, designer, logo, marty miller, mx2