Stacy Rhoads of Too Yarn Cute is the latest of the crochet bloggers appearing on the Yarn Thing podcast with Marly Bird. Her website is www.tooyarncute.com

Stacy Rhoads is a self-taught crocheter. Her grandmother and great-grandmother were both crocheters, but she thought she she was ‘too cool’ to ask to learn from them. (Now that her grandmother has passed away, she wishes she had learned from her but she feels her presence when she crochets.) Stacy was determined to crochet, and felt important to carry it on. She is a visual crocheter, which becomes hard,when learning to read patterns. When she writes patterns, she sometimes finds that she has created stitches that she can’t find names for elsewhere and has to name them herself, then figure out how to describe how they’re done. [Read more…]

Teacher, Designer, ‘Knitting Enabler’ Lorilee Beltman was the Guest on the Yarn Thing Podcast with Marly Bird, today, which is also a reunion of two great friends, room-mates from the events they’ve taught at.

Lorilee Beltman says she learn to knit, taught by her mom, as a kid with two-color knitting at about age 8, but it didn’t stick. She remembers crewel (embroidery) was more enjoyable. Later as an adult with a child in tow, she relearned from a neighbor.

Lorilee actually fell in love with knitting after she opened a yarn shop in 2005, in Grand Rapids, Michigan where she fell down the rabbit hole! Part of that process for her was creating a business plan and determining that the shop would be viable in that location. She also found people who knew a lot,  were willing to learn and she could learn from them, too. Outside of the shop, she taught for the very first time at Sock Summit 2009. That led to other opportunities, working and teaching with Interweave.

There is a video posted of Lorilee teaching Continental Knitting that has had over a million views. This first video began a journey that has led to the newest project:A Craftsy Class! One of her popular classes is the two color-stranding. She describes it as a ‘mutant form of intarsia’ which makes for a easy method of creating vertical stripes, that can also be found on a DVD from Interweave.

Lorilee Beltman has become known for the Bold Move skirt pattern. The pattern was inspired by waves on the beaches of Washington State, the original was knit with yarn from The Plucky Knitter, in a special colorway created for Lorilee’s move from Michigan to Seattle, ‘Seattle or Bust’.

Another pattern has become a signature piece, her Sinkmates pattern. It began with a blog post about her brother, that Lorilee was inspired to offer her design of a mitered square knitted dishcloth with a bold color finish to use in our kitchens, the proceeds went to Special Olympics. As of December 2014, she was able to send a check of $3,700!

She has a pattern coming out in Vogue Knitting, Spring 2015, a sock pattern in colorwork, a Purl design, she says it looks like little caterpillars.

Designs as listed in Ravelry. Lorilee’s Website. You can find Lorilee at Stitches West next week and Green Mountain Spinnery for the Sugar Season retreat in March. (Check it out, both XRX, host of the Stitches Events, and Green Mountain Spinnery are Yarn Thing Sponsor!)

Kristin Omdahl of Styled by Kristin and Wrapture, Yarn Thing Sponsor makes her a Superhero and why we love every visit with her on the podcast with Marly Bird.

Kristin Omdahl’s latest venture is another book (she says it’s #10) is Crochet so Lovely (Available as a Kindle book! It will ship in Paperback on March 11th).  Her great sense of style makes for patterns. She tries to imagine what she would wear if she was asked out by Duane ”The Rock” Johnson (even though he’s off the market, you’d want to be dressy!) whether it’s a beach date or a night on the town. She says it’s a book of crochet garments that uses various techniques like motifs and hairpin lace, or BOTH.

[Read more…]

Yi-An “E” Lee of The Crochet Lounge met up with us at the Yarn Thing Podcast with Marly Bird.

Yi-An (sounds like E-Ann, so usually she uses the moniker “E”) Lee is a ‘Designer, Choreographer of Hooks & Strings at The Crochet Lounge’, a Mom of four, ‘playing with home-schooling’, loves social media especially Facebook with her growth from 10,000 to almost 80,000 on The Crochet Lounge Facebook page in the last year. This has inspired her to starte a second arm to her business, the Lulu Lounge, more about that later, but both created for busy moms who need look professional and put together as well as comfy. [Read more…]

Lindsey Martin of Erin.Lane Bags and New YARN THING Sponsor made room in her busy production time to visit the Yarn Thing Podcast with Marly Bird and share what’s new for 2015.

Lindsey and her Mom, Lisa, learned to knit with her aunt one Christmas. After losing needles and not finding needles cases ‘cute enough’, Lindsey convince Lisa to make on for her. She took it to her local knit night and everyone fell in love with it. At first they made them out of the kindness of their hearts but the demand made them realize very quickly that they had a business! In fact the knit group became market research.

In 2006, dad had to retire with disability, so Lisa and Lindsey began to work on the bags as a wholesale business. The aunt convinced them and supported their adventure to Stitches South in Atlanta to sale retail the first time. Marly was a first customer there! (I love that they had a rule that only one of them could freak out at-a-time, because that first time is a giant step.) They went to Stitches Midwest, Stitches East and then Stitches West, getting feedback from people they meet at these events and others.

Lindsey says her mom was really good at matching fabrics. They often shopped at their local big box store, but they would sometimes have to venture off the beaten path, maybe all over town, to find things that looked good together. Now, she spends a lot of time online looking at several different distributors to match fabrics.

Last year, Lindsey broadened their fabrics available by working with designers. The first was Kristin Omdahl, and they were very popular at Stitches East this past October. Working with Spoonflower, she has also created bags for Marly Bird (!), Buffalo Wool Co., Bar-maids and Knitting Rose.

Marly’s favorite bags are the Two-fer, the Sock Bag and the XL project bags. Lindsey explained how the trial and error process for these designs, and the e-tablet cases made with adjust able magnets the same as the needle cases.  Check out the Erin.Lane Bags website, follow her on Facebook and Twitter and of course Etsy

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