Sharon Zientara, Author of 3 Skeins or Less, Quick Crochet Accessories visited us on the Yarn Thing podcast with Marly Bird. This was her first time visiting, but her experiences in our fiber world were not that of someone who hasn’t had learning opportunities.

Sharon learned to knit when her mom came and taught knitting her second-grade class. Her mom, Sharon says is an amazing seamstress who did a little of everything. A friend had an alpaca farm in Colorado so she moved there to help out and get paid in yarn, knowing Interweave was nearby. She applied for an internship, worked with Eunny Jang, [Read more…]

Hunter Hammersen, author of CURLS, visited us in HD today on the Yarn Thing Podcast with Marly Bird. Everybody sounded wonderful!

Hunter says she has some guilt about having to give knitting more than one try before she was hooked. First try in colllege, nope, a couple of years later, no again, again in 2007 with a pair of socks began the dawn of understanding.

She almost immediately began tweaking her work, then after being requested to write the patterns down, she did. In 2009, Hunter began posting patterns online in Ravelry, she says she posted about 14 patterns, knitting till it hurt. Her first book, out in 2011, the next year her first self-published books, CURLS is her seventh self published and another will be out this fall, with a sequel to CURLS out next summer. SO VERY EXCITING for fans of her beautiful designs.

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Mystery Knit Lit Author Betty Hechtman shared her love of crochet and writing with Marly Bird on the Yarn Thing Podcast. She says she likes the genre Cozy Mysteries (more about people and less about gore – there are dead bodies but everybody has a good time!) better than Mystery Knit Lit, and I do too.

Betty says as a kid she fell in love with Granny Squares and wanted to learn to make them, finally found a kit in FAO Schwartz ‘Learn to Make Granny Squares’. Finishing the second one was her Golden Moment of Crochet. Learning to knit, she went into a yarn store with a friend and bought very LARGE sized needles, knitting four strands together. She prefers crochet… perhaps that’s reflected in her writing, as her crochet mysteries outnumber the other series. [Read more…]