A Serendipitous Meeting at the Black Sheep Gathering!

The magic of the internet and a love of crochet, brought us together from 3 parts of the world to attend the annual Black Sheep Gathering in Eugene, Oregon- my hometown!  It was the first time I have had the opportunity to attend this event, and I had the pleasure of getting together  with my new friends; Laurie Wheeler, the "Fearless Leader" of the Crochet Liberation Front (left) and Linda Skuja, winner of the 2011 Flamie award for best new designer (center).  Laurie made the trek down from Washington and Linda who is from Latvia, just happened to be vacationing in Oregon!  I never dreamed I would have the chance to spend the day with these wonderful ladies!  It was great to have some time to talk about the world of crochet, and learn about fibers from Laurie.  She even inspired me to buy a drop spindle and some roving!  I am hoping to learn how to spin and teach my daughter one day.  Now that I have had the chance to get to know Laurie and Linda, I am really wishing the world was a smaller place so we could get together more often!

Laurie and Linda admiring the amazing prize winning sheep 

Adorable Alpacas!

Laurie debuted her beautiful "Fearless Leader Vest"  and had many admirers!

Wool Cave!

Such beautiful colors everywhere!

I wanted to take them all home with me!

There wasn't a lot of crochet at the gathering, but there was a fun selection of crocheted food on display:

Thank You Crochet Dude!

I am working on a design sample, and the yarn I was sent is slightly thicker than the yarn I used for the original swatch.  I wanted to make sure that I was using the best hook size for this yarn, and found that I hadn't brought anything larger than a "K" (6.5mm) hook with me on my vacation to America.  I thought to myself, no problem, I am in the land of craft stores so it should be easy to find a larger hook.  What I discovered was, that hooks larger than a size "K" are a rarity in this town!  

After searching several stores, I struck gold at my last stop, Michael's craft store.  I was thrilled to find an aluminum "L" (8mm) hook as part of a set in The Crochet Dude's new line of products for the Boye company- at the reasonable price of $4.99!  I was also happy because I already have a plastic "L" hook at home and I didn't want to buy a duplicate.  I was unaware that you could buy an aluminum hook this large, and I really prefer aluminum to plastic.  The bonus is that I also got the two jumbo "P" and "Q" size hooks.  It was so great to find this treasure in a sea of tiny hooks.  Thank you, Crochet Dude!

And the Winners are....

AND

Thank you to all that took the time to visit my blog and enter the contest in honor of my 125th blog post.  I had interest in the Floral Cuff and the Masterpiece Ring, so I decided to give away both prizes! My daughter took time out from her 5th birthday celebration to draw the winning names! 

The winner of the Masterpiece Ring is...Ginger and the winner of the Floral Cuff is...Amy.  Congratulations!   It would be great if both of you could email me by Monday, June 20th at:  stitchstory@yahoo.com, with your mailing addresses, and I will send the pieces out to you!  

I hope to still be blogging strong at 250 posts, please keep visiting for more of my crochet adventures!

A Contest in Honor of My 125th Blog Post!

When I started this blog back in September 2009, I never thought I would be able to come up with so many things to post about.  In fact, I was afraid to start a blog for fear that I wouldn't be able to keep it up.  Well, to my surprise, blogging is a lot of fun!  It has forced me to do more writing, which is definitely not my favorite thing to do, and I have noticed that writing comes easier to me now with all of the practice.  The part of blogging that I enjoy most, is editing and selecting the photos for the posts.  Sometimes I wish there didn't need to be any text, but I try hard to strike a balance!

In honor of my recent 125th blog post, I would like to have a contest.  I have selected three pieces that I have previously blogged about; the Floral Cuff and the Masterpiece Ring are freeform, and the Crawford Necklace is a sample for a pattern that was published in the UK magazine, Inside Crochet.  The randomly selected winner will get to choose one of these pieces.  All you have to do is leave a comment below, mentioning the piece that you would like to win.  I will announce the winner June 14th in a post here!