Friday, April 17, 2009

Strapped for Bags, Volume 3

A couple of years ago, at a CGOA Conference I had attended, I was invited to lunch with a bunch of designer friends. These were people long established, and some just starting to blossom, in the design world and I felt honored to be invited to join them. For me, it felt like I had been invited to the White House for dinner to sit with dignitaries from around the world, except these dignitaries were way better -- they were crochet designers!

One of the conversations that came up was how long it took for their submitted designs to become a book, sometimes taking a year -- or more! And many times, because of the delay, this would cause yarns that were once hot and highly desired while the pattern was under construction to be found discontinued, and hard to come by when the hard cover book finally arrived at the local book stores. (Yes, that has happened to some of my published designs!) Why the long wait to go from concept to printed book? Usually it has something to do with a slow boat from China...

So the designers said, "Why don't we try producing our own book and see what happens?" and they did; they've published three! Then, about a month ago, I was invited to jump on the speedboat and am pleased to be one of the featured designers in their JUST RELEASED 4th book: Strapped for Bags, Volume 3, produced by Straight from Today’s Designers. The book may be ordered from Ravelry, or from www.sftdonline.com for just $10 and instantly downloaded to your personal computer. How awesome is that -- no need to wait for the slow boat from China!! ((grins))

I am honored to have my Blue Ribbon winning, texture-rich Hip Hoppin' Backpack design featured with today's hot designers Vashti Braha, Doris Chan, Noreen Crone-Findlay, Tammy Hildebrand, Amy O'Neill Houck, and Marty Miller, offering seven fantastic crochet bag patterns!! ((See, I told you they were dignitaries of crochet!) Get your copy today! :)

2 comments:

Astaryth said...

I love this bag, and I popped over to Ravelry (which I am enjoying, I just need to find some more time to spend there. LOL!) to see the rest of the bags in the book. All very cute. How would you rate the difficulty of the patterns in the book? Are they easy and will whip up fast, or are they more of the 'need to dedicate some time and brain power' type of things? I've actually been looking for a pattern for a bag, so this was very interesting for me!

CrochetWithDee said...

In looking at the (individual) bag information available on Ravelry, most seem to be beginner/easy, and some, like mine and Vashti's, are in the intermediate range.

Based upon the beautiful crochet work I have seen you post on your blog, Astaryth, you can do them all!
~Dee