Craftlit Podcast with Heather Ordover

Craftlit Podcast with Heather Ordover was the featured guest today for PODCASTER NOVEMBER on the Yarn Thing Podcast with Marly Bird.

Grandmother taught Heather to knit, grandmother also did cross-stitching and tatting. In fact, Heather says all of her family were handcrafters, the women did all the fiber arts, men were crafty woodworkers too. ‘It all kinda came to a head’ she says,”after 9/11″ when the high school she taught at in New York City was one of the three schools evacuated that day. Later, she was knitting during lunch and some of her students asked to learn. She arranged for after-school time lessons and 48 girls and boys showed up. She was able to share that experience with Brenda Dayne on the Cast-On Podcast (amazing how often this wonderful program has come up already!) and that essay led directly to Craftlit. She began the weekly podcast after she had quit teaching and was home with her kids and writing for a living—the first episode aired at the end of April 2006.

Later, she was knitting during lunch and some of her students asked to learn. She arranged for after-school time lessons and 48 girls and boys showed up. She was able to share that experience with Brenda Dayne on the Cast-On Podcast (amazing how often this wonderful program has come up already!) and that essay led directly to Craftlit. She began the weekly podcast after she had quit teaching and was home with her kids and writing for a living—the first episode aired at the end of April 2006

Prepwork for the podcast is about 10-20 hours a week, but includes both the FREE Craftlit show (airs every Friday at about 3pm Eastern) and the weekly Premium Membership Audio which just finished Sherlock Holmes’ first adventure A Study in Scarlett by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Nowadays, Heather can use professional readers for the books giving listeners an accurate dramatic portrayal of the text—hearing things pronounced correctly has been a learning experience for me! (Heather agrees: “its one the things that makes me REALLY happy about the show’s content and what we can bring listeners.”)

There is an active Ravelry group that discusses the current reads and offers suggestions for other books they would like to hear. There is also Facebook Page and Public Group. Click the Craftlit graphic above to visit the website, don’t forget to bookmark it when you get there.

Heather has also written a young adult novel, that is the first of a trilogy called Grounded: The Seven Series featuring a first person, who is a knitter with some undiscovered talents to learn about! (I’m really afraid to say more than that, because I’ve read it and don’t want to give too much away. LOVED IT! and can’t wait for the next in the series.) There were eight patterns for SOCKS created for the characters in the books too, you’ll have to check those out.

This is not the first time Heather has visited with Marly on the Yarn Thing podcast, she was there Jan 10th, 2012.