Meet the Marly Bird Team: Cryssi

If you’ve been paying attention to the recently launched BiCrafty Boot Camp: Knitting Lessons for Crocheters then you might have noticed that I have a team behind me now. I love collaboration and work often with other knit and crochet designers in the industry. In addition, I’m thrilled that I now have the chance to have my own Marly Bird team working with me.

The Marly Bird Team

Previously, as some of you know, I had Katelyn helping me run things behind the scenes. However, she moved on to other things (I miss her but am happy for her!) and about six months ago I hired a new team to help me do all of the things that Katelyn was doing. You were introduced to them briefly in the intro to BiCrafty Boot Camp. Meg does a lot of the Facebook stuff and also does the roundup posts on the blog. Kathryn does the majority of the blog posts as well as handles Instagram. And Cryssi is my executive assistant, the all-around admin person who also does a little bit of social media, newsletters, and ordering all of the great giveaway stuff we often have for you.

The BiCrafty Boot Camp actually came about because two new Marly Bird team members – Cryssi and Kathryn – are crocheters who didn’t yet know how to knit. I told them that they’d better get on board with knitting, not just because it’s fun to be bicrafty but also in order to better answer questions and do blog posts related to knitting. So, we wanted to give you a chance to get to know each of these Marly Bird team members a little bit better. We’ll start today with an introduction to Cryssi. So, Meet Cryssi!

Join Cryssi and Kathryn in learning to knit through the FREE BiCrafty Boot Camp: Knitting Lessons for Crocheters.

5 Fun Things to Know About Cryssi

There’s a chance that you’ve already interacted with Cryssi on social media or email if you’ve contacted me through those channels. And if you’ve joined BiCrafty Boot Camp then you’ve already had the chance to see her and Kathryn introduce themselves in the first Facebook Live video, which you can watch here, as well as in the first “learn how to knit” video, which you can watch here.

But in addition to what you can learn there, here are five fun things to know about Cryssi:

1. She Learned to Crochet at Age 9, Kind Of

Cryssi learned to crochet when she was still in the single digits. However, all she learned at the time was the crochet chain. She made endless crochet chains. Then she didn’t learn anything else so she got tired of it and didn’t crochet again until over a decade later.

Fun fact: Marly Bird team member Kathryn actually also learned to crochet in elementary school and only made chains then didn’t actually learn to crochet until her twenties!

2. Cryssi Kept Her First Crochet Blanket, Though She Can’t Use It

First of all, judos to her because she made over 100 crochet granny squares and stitched them together into that first blanket. That’s a big feat. And she still has that crochet blanket. It’s all wonky with holes in it because of all of those errors we make when we first learn a craft. Therefore, they don’t actually use the blanket. Nevertheless, she keeps it. Those first makes are so special aren’t they? What was yours?!

3. A Later Blanket Won a Prize

Cryssi submitted a crochet blanket to her county fair a few years ago – and it won first prize! It was a colorful Catherine Wheel stitch blanket.

4. Crochet Helped Change Her Life

Cryssi was recently featured in the April 2021 issue of digital magazine Happily Hooked. Kathryn has a column there about how Crochet Heals us and she interviewed Cryssi in depth about the healing experience of crafting with her aunt, which she had shared briefly in this post. One of the special things you’ll learn if you check out that issue is excerpted here:

“For a decade from about age 13 to about 23, I was the life of the party. There wasn’t a drink or a drug you couldn’t throw my way, and I was a mess. When I was 23, I met my husband who shared the gospel with me and I began a relationship with Christ. I stopped drinking, smoking, and recreationally using drugs. I found myself with a lot of time on my hands and I’m really bad at being idle. Crocheting filled in those gaps and was such a blessing to me. I had always been very creative and I loved the way that crochet allowed me to mix colors and patterns and create something from nothing, essentially!”

5. She Is Funny

Watch the live videos referenced above. She’s hilarious. It’s so fun having her on the Marly Bird team.