If you follow me on Instagram, you’ve seen my recent posts with #WhileIWasYarning. Well, that isn’t just some new hashtag I made up, it is actually a campaign that I’ve joined with Red Heart to promote the use of yarn in everyday life. Learn more about how the While I was yarning journey will work.
Red Heart wants everybody to share what their #WhileIWasYarning journey is and my team and I will be doing just that! For the entire year of 2018, we will share what we are working on, we will share our journey with knitting and crochet and we would love to see where your yarning takes you in 2018! Join us, will you?
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The Mission While I was Yarning 2018:
For 2018 we would like to have you join us on a journey of knitting and crochet. Each month we would like to challenge you find new places where you can share your craft, new projects to try that are out of your comfort zone, new yarn, new designers, new tools that you can experience to grow your love for your yarn craft.
Red Heart has teamed up with us to provide some great giveaways along the way! You will be able to play along with us over on the Facebook page. Look for the weekly posts with the theme and add your photos to be entered to win a prize package from Red Heart. It is really that simple.
- Take a photo of what you are working on,
- Apply it to the theme for that month,
- Add the hashtag #WhileIWasYarning and you will be entered to win.
My Team–What Yarning Means to Me:
To get us started right in the new year I had each of my team members talk about what yarning has meant to them. You will see a lot of what they are working on in the group so I thought that you should
know about their story as well as my own.
Marly’s Yarning Story:
For me, yarn is a part of my everyday life, literally. I talk about yarn, write about yarn, teach with yarn, design for yarn, make my own yarn, and knit or crochet with yarn every day. Sometimes I feel like I have to fit my life in around my yarning instead of the other way around. LOL.
Luckily, yarning is something I can do while I live my life. Having yarn with me as I travel, attend sporting events, watch tv or movies, and or vacation is the norm. You can tell from my recent family trip to Mexico that really is true. Don’t worry, While I was yarning I made sure to make time to also relax and vacation. 🙂
When Red Heart showed me this campaign and told me they wanted to show how knitters, crocheters, crafters always find time to fit yarn into their life no matter what they are doing, I felt like they finally understood me! I mean, the #WhileIWasYarning is so totally ME! I’m always the mom with her hook or needles working on something between basketball games or football games; I’m always the mom that works on something while I wait in line at the grocery store, or in line to pick the kids up from sports; I’m always the mom who brings her yarn to doctors offices and gets a few rows in while I’m waiting. It is very easy for me to share what I am doing in my life and show what I am working on while I am doing it.
I’m excited to see where your journey takes you and I hope you will bring your yarn along for the ride and show us!
Katelyn’s Yarning Story:
Yarning to me comes in the form of both knit and crochet. I have been crocheting longer but love both. Many stories are about grandmothers or mothers being the teacher and in my case my great-grandmother had passed before I was old enough to learn. My mom tried to teach me from what she could remember, but as she tried to pull from memory our granny square just wasn’t right. I ended up learning from a Klutz book, for those that don’t know these were HUGE when I was a kid and a great way to learn new crafts.
From there I started to learn to knit while my grandfather was in the hospital with cancer, also from a Klutz book. It gave me something to do while I sat and visited with him. After his passing it was a little while until I started back into it. I moved across the country for my husbands job, we are talking two days after we got married, and I had no one. My mom sent me a copy of Crochet Today! Magazine and I was HOOKED (pun intended)!
Over the years I kept pushing myself to learn new things, find new teachers and online connections to develop my skills. Now in my journey I have two young children and yarning is my sanctuary. It is my little retreat at the end of the day, the time to myself. It allows me to do something with my hands while my mind tries to relax. The best part for me is that I am making something with my own two hands for the people that I love. My children, my mom, my friend’s babies all receive my love through my work.
Brittani-Pearl’s Yarning Story:
While both my mother and grandmother crocheted, it never really caught my attention, with one exception. On New Years Eve when everyone was having millennium parties (party like it’s 1999, woot!), I was sitting at home with my mom, and she taught me to chain. I chained through an entire skein of yarn! After that it took Lindsey Martin over at Erin Lane Bags to bring me back to yarn love, and boy was 2017 an immersion experience!
I worked with Lindsey’s husband David doing social media for his gaming business, and I was asked a few times if I knew anyone who did what I did, but for fiber folks. I looked all around and couldn’t find anyone! So at STITCHES United last year, I said, “Give me a month to do the research and we can try this out!”.
Lindsey recommended Marly’s videos to me, and they were close to the only thing on Youtube that didn’t make me want to throw my new needles across the room! Along with being a necessary skill for the job, knitting has helped my anxiety *so* much-it’s my own form of (productive) meditation.
There’s nothing better than a mug of cocoa (with marshmallows), a big fluffy blanket, and some comfy, cozy yarn on my needles! Nowadays, all but one of my clients are in the fiber art industry, and I cannot believe that I get to work in a field with so many amazing people-both my friends and their fantastic communities!
Setting Goals for 2018:
Many people set goals at the start of the year, things that they want to accomplish or ways to make improvements. I encourage you to set your own yarning goals for the year but don’t feel pressured to set a years worth of goals. I will be working on my goals monthly to meet what the yarning theme is. This will help me to stay on track and stay motivated!
One of my goals this year is to take more progress photos. Every day I have yarn in my hand and I don’t document it enough to see where I have been and where I am going. This year on my yarning journey I will be doing just that.
Marly’s Goals:
Okay, I’m going to be truthful. I hate make goals and telling them publicly. I prefer to keep them close to my chest. But because I want to be a team player I will give you a few goals I have 🙂
- Make a sweater for me
- Promote Chic Sheep Yarn to every knitter and crocheter I know
- Finish the other half of my basement and expand my studio (I know that might not seem like a yarning goal but trust me…I need a bigger space for all my YARN! LMAO!)
Katelyn’s Goals:
- Finishing a sweater for myself
- Making a pair of socks with DPNs
- Making a project with broomstick lace or hairpin lace (a technique I have never done)
Brittani-Pearl’s Goals:
- Learn how to crochet
- Knit a sweater
- Complete at least 1 project with every new Red Heart Yarn in 2018!
While I was Yarning Checklist:
For those of you that are planners we have put together a check list of the themes that we are planning for the year. Please be understanding if some of them change as we move along in the year, you never know when the next messy bun trend will pop up! Feel free to print this out and keep it with you so you can find projects that you want to make for each of the themes. Within each month we will break it down into weekly themes as well so that you can participate either with the weekly theme or the overall monthly theme.
Most importantly, HAVE FUN! Learn something new this year, meet someone new, and enjoy the craft that connects us all together.
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Very nice to read you yarning stories. I retired from teaching elementary art 4 years ago. I learned so many years ago I don’t remember when I learned, but I was in elementary school and my mother taught me. I crochet often, and feel withdraw symptoms if I don’t for an extended period of time!
As a side note, I might be the only one, but I found the soft grey colored print a bit difficult to read.