The Crochet Club 2012

Following the success of The Crochet Club 2011 - we are proud to announce that we are now ready to receive applications to join the club in 2012. Members of the crochet club will receive all yarns, beads and patterns needed to create the exclusive project which incorporates many crochet techniques and could act as an excellent learning tool for those wanting to enhance their existing skills and learn new methods of working a crochet fabric.

The design for 2012 has been inspired by traditional lace crochet and patchwork design. The project is made up of both conventional and contemporary crochet pieces which, when put together, create a lovely piece which could be used as a small bed cover or throw. The colour palette is feminine and pretty with pieces widely based on floral designs. Techniques used include beading, lace crochet and colour changing.

Club members will be sent a kit containing all yarn and beads in February 2012. Patterns will be sent over the course of the subsequent 6 months via email and club members will also be supported by a dedicated blog which will be updated frequently with tips, techniques and mini master-classes for those in need of a little help and encouragement.
Membership to the club will be limited so that the piece remains exclusive and the patterns will not be published elsewhere. All yarn used will be from the Rowan Cotton Glace range and all beads will be from the Debbie Abrahams range. Membership of the club is open to everyone regardless of where in the world you live and in 2011 we had 250 members from all corners of the world including China, New Zealand, Australia, Spain, France, Germany, Norway and the UK. We have tried really hard to keep the price of membership as low as possible, but the total price will depend on where in the world you live due to variations in postal charges.

For more information on prices and to fill in your application form please visit The Crochet Club page on the JANIE CROW web site.

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Innocent's Big Knit

Worldwide Knitting in Public Day was on Saturday 11th June and it marked the official woolly launch of this year’s 'Innocent Big Knit' and they need your help!
They want to raise £160k this year for Age UK by knitting 650,000 little hats which will go on their smoothie bottles and be sold in stores in November. For every little hat knitted, they will give 25p to Age UK to help them make winter a little warmer for older people across the UK.
Innocent need your help to reach this huge target - they have 3 different patterns to start you off and there will be lots more going up on their website very soon. You can find the patterns by searching 'Innocent’s Big Knit' on Ravelry and the pdfs will also be going up on the website over the next weeks
Every hat counts- so why not get together this Saturday with your Knitting chums and make a few hats for Innocent’s Big Knit?

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The Crochet Club Project 2011

Here we are in June and I can’t believe that the members of my Crochet Club 2011 have now been sent their final set of patterns and that I am getting reports of completed projects from my current members. It is incredible how quickly the last 6 months have gone by – terrifying actually – as my life seems to be flying by me at an absurd rate, but I guess being busy is better than being bored and wishing time away.

I hope that members have enjoyed working through the Crochet Club Project for 2011 and are pleased with the end result. I know that a lot of them have used the project as a learning tool and I have had a lot of feedback from members saying that they have been pushed to master new techniques and try new things that they would not have tackled before. I hope that they have found the way I have written the patterns along with the blog postings a useful learning tool and that they feel have benefitted from being a member of the club - even if they might not be entirely in love with the design!

The project for next year will be based on traditional lace designs and as such will have a more feminine feel with a much softer colour palette. It is really hard trying to design something that will appeal to a large range of people and for a while I found it difficult to get going on the design, spending a lot of time worrying about whether you guys might like it, but eventually my lovely husband got fed up with my turmoil and made this very astute observation:

The second biggest selling album of all time is ACDC’s ‘Back in Black’; the third best seller is Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark side of the Moon’ and the fourth is the sound track from the film ‘The Bodyguard’ featuring Whitney Houston. All these albums sold over 40 million copies each.

I like ACDC and can just about put up with Pink Floyd (in small doses) and I could probably sit through the soundtrack to the ‘Bodyguard’ so long as there was a glass of wine and a good magazine handy, however (and this is my husband’s point), what would fill me with a feeling of complete horror would be the prospect of listening to ‘Thriller’ by Michael Jackson which takes the number one spot in the list of best selling albums of all time and has outsold the other 3 I have mentioned by over 60 million copies!

Now – I realise that I have probably mortally offended those of you who loved the late MJ, (those of you who can do the moon walk and have a bit of a thing for sparkly gloves and face masks) but unfortunately his music would not even make it into my top 100 even though the equivalent of double the population of the United Kingdom own a copy!

With this analogy in mind I am now well and truly within the throws of my new design (with the saying ‘you can’t please all of the people all of the time’ ever present in my mind) and although I have not yet managed to post the images I promised you at the end of May things are now on track and there should be some images to show you pretty soon. Please be patient with me – I hope to get the images sorted within the next month and will let you all know when everything is finalised. There is still plenty of time before participants for next year need to confirm their places and you guys will be offered places first so please don’t worry about the time scale. If you havent yet submitted your details so that you will be offered a place for 2012 you can do so by visiting my web site and filling in an on line registration form.

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