Find Your Tribe

We are starting into the last week of March and the end of National Crochet Month, though it’s always time to celebrate crochet for me. One of the best ways to celebrate is to find a tribe of fellow crochet and yarn enthusiasts to gather with. I spend a lot of time with my group at Longmont Yarn Shoppe “Casual Crochet”. We meet each month on the first and third Wednesday of the month (and the 5th Wednesday if the month has five).

Last week we got together and we had some fun celebrating the end of NatCroMo. We had a lovely spread of snacks and drinks. Gail, the owner of Longmont Yarn Shoppe, treated us to these goodies. The core of our group, including myself, have been gathering together to crochet and learn from each other for at least 8 years now. Might actually be longer, I’ve sort of lost track of when exactly we started getting together.

I even brought in my latest big crochet hook. This hook is 31 mm in diameter (approximately 1.22 inches) and is a bit of a workout to crochet with. The smaller hook in the photo is a Clover Amour P/Q 15mm. Big difference in size between the 2.

Karen was the only one that was game for trying it out though. We had a lot of fun crocheting and laughing.

I am planning on working the 2 balls of Bernat Blanket Extra Thick I got to test out the hook into a lapghan. I picked a simple single crochet rectangle for the pattern as I plan on putting this on my lap when my cat wants to sit with me. Otherwise his claws get a bit pokey.

That was the second large hook I made this month. The first is hanging in the shop window and is even larger.

It was made from a 2 inch diameter pine dowel and was quite the workout to carve. The small hook in the picture with the dowel is the same in the photo further up with the big hook. I’ll be making a paper mache version of this giant hook after we take it out of the window. That way the shop can have one for display that isn’t quite so heavy. Seriously, this hook is like a baseball bat.

I hope you all have a great start to your last week of NatCroMo 2024. I’ll have a few more blog posts for you before April rolls around.

Yarn Bombing the Tree

2023 Yarn Bombing of Tree
at Longmont Yarn Shoppe

Last year the crochet group (Casual Crochet) at the Longmont Yarn Shoppe covered the trunk of the tree in front of the shop with a multi-textural yarn bombing. It was a big hit with the community and so yarn-bombing the tree is now becoming a regular thing for the shop. In December the machine knitting folks made a red and white striped fabric that they wrapped the tree with.

This year Gail, the shop owner, and I decided for National Crochet Month we needed a new yarn-bombing. We got going on this a little late, so we did it in stages. Yesterday we finally finished it.

The exterior of building the shop is housed in is currently undergoing some renovations, so it is harder for folks to find us at times. This means the yarn-bombing will help make our location easier to spot. I used one of the colorful shopping bags and turned it into the first stage of our yarn bombing that we put up on March 1st.

Then this past Wednesday we put up Stage 2, which is our Random Acts of Crochet Kindness (RAoCK) section. It has been really popular and the group is going to be busy keeping up supplies to re-stock it.

It was also our first Wednesday of the month gathering, and we spent a lot of our time sewing pieces to the Stage 3 piece. My friend Margie helped me a lot on this project and has really been the inspiration for lots of our RAoCK projects.

Finally yesterday, Margie and I got together for a couple hours at the shop and finished attaching all the pretties to the Stage 3 section and put it on the tree. I think it came out really well. Yesterday was pretty chilly with snow in the air, so our colorful spring and summer feeling yarn bombing was a fun way to add some warmth to the day.

Our group has more crochet activities planned for NatCroMo at the shop. Stop by again regularly this month for all the excitement.