Progress, Hope, and Happiness Collection Launch Day Has Arrived!

It felt like this day would never come, but here it is - the launch of the 2017 Summer Progress, Hope and Happiness Collection. Hold on to your making sticks and hooks, because this collection is a stunner, even if I do say so myself!

As I write this, I am just a wee bit teary-eyed. I started this collection's process on January 1 of this year with a world-wide indie dyer submission call. That was followed by a designer call. The 14 indie artists that responded (5 dyers and 9 designers) have absolutely gone above and beyond anything I could have imagined. From all corners of the globe, we huddled in an off-line forum at all hours of the day and night and hashed out myriad details. We commiserated with each other, overcame technology snafus, and (mostly) met self-imposed deadlines with grace and good humor. We gathered prizes, put together a Ravelry group for a world-wide #happinessmakealong2017 event, got makers to actually join the group without even seeing one design beforehand, and now are here at launch day. It feels like winning the Boston Marathon and the Tour de France at the same time.

And it fills me with joy to know that artists around the world came together with good will and some amazing ideas and never once threatened to take their respective toys and leave the sandbox. This collection is my heart - and I cannot be more proud to have designs shown alongside each of these nine fellow designers and made with these awesome indie-dyed custom colorways. Our #happinessmakealong2017 group can be found here on Ravelry. We will be making these designs, all of which can be purchased on Ravelry in each designer's respective pattern store, between June 1 - July 16. There will be surprises. There will be yarny (and other) prizes. Most importantly, there will be a shared, world-wide maker community. I hope you will join us!

Without further ado, here is the 2017 Progress, Hope, and Happiness Collection look-book:

Turning Toward Happiness

I cannot believe it is already mid-April. Where, o where, has the time flown?

I am, however, really pleased that we are just about six short weeks away from the #happinessmakealong2017 - you know, the world-wide making event associated with the Progress, Hope and Happiness Summer Collection that I have been curating/organizing. All of the designers finally have received their yarn (our designer located on the Asian sub-continent was the last to receive her yarn, but it has finally made the long, successful trek to her).

As you will see below, I am working with some wonderfully dyed, original-to-this-collection colorways. Two from a U.S.-based dyer, A Hundred Ravens (which I blogged about here), and a third from an indie dyer in Switzerland, Mulberry Cottage Yarns. I think Franzi did a fantastic job, and on two bases, this vivid, summery blue, entitled "naiads," pops with hints of green. I will let Franzi tell you about the colorway in her own words, from her original colorway submission: "The blue ... is named after a group of water(well) nymphs and is mostly turquoise with specks of yellow-green and some more blueish parts - like a deep, clear pool with some waterplants in it." 

While the collection's release will officially kick off June 1st (and definitely look for more information on that in about a month), the 8 brand new colorways will be available for worldwide purchase by mid-May, so that makers wanting to use them during the along will have time to receive their yarny packages in time for the collection's release. If you are curious about the remaining colorways, as well as sneak peeks of some of the designs in process, definitely check out the hashtag #happinessmakealong2017 on Instagram and Facebook. Don't be shy about reposting any of the colorways and designs that are striking your fancy. The participating dyers and designers will be so thrilled you showed them some reposting love. Independent artists and designers all put their respective heart and soul into their creations (myself very much included!), so receiving positive feedback, in whatever form, really means a lot.

For myself, it is more than merely positive design feedback. Everyone's willingness to participate in the making of this collection and event is a turn toward happiness, and cultural and social expansion. It absolutely takes effort and dedication to willingly seek out worldwide artistic and maker connections - but I think it is more than worth it. Thus far, the dyers and designers have been engaged behind the scenes, working with a lot of mindfulness to create something of which we can all be proud. My heart just swells with the knowledge of this combined effort. Of course, great color and summer design thrown into the mix also doesn't hurt. 

I hope everyone will join us on June 1st. The worldwide maker along (being hosted on Ravelry) will last for six weeks, and you know there will be prizes, surprises, and loads of maker community across many continents and both hemispheres. I pinch myself just thinking about all the awesome possibility.

Progress, Hope, & Happiness

Interior Design Fun in the Summertime

A former student once remarked during a class discussion that we were in the midst of an interior design revolution. This was sometime in 2008, and I wholeheartedly agreed with her.

Well, seven years later, the revolution shows no signs of stopping. Humans continue to define, redefine and refine their living spaces. One of the revolutionary fronts has to be DIY and knit and crochet. Even though decoration for the home has always been one of crochet’s hallmarks, there is an absolute redefinition of its aesthetic. While many have reclaimed the granny square blanket, the crochet interior design fabrics currently being created are full of cutting edge texture, design, and color. From motif work with an ability to mindfully stash-bust to texture rich pillow covers to decorative lace, crochet for the home has come of age. As Marcy Smith, Interweave Crochet’s editor, remarked in her introduction to its first-ever home collection published at the beginning of the year, not only does crochet everywhere in her living space define it as “home,” her teenage son’s friends thought it was cool. Thanks, Marcy, for sharing that nugget – it indeed was a crochet “win.”

I was fortunate enough to have many home fashion designs published in 2014 by third party publishers (including a rug design in the aforementioned Interweave Crochet special home edition). Now that many of those designs’ rights are once again mine, I’ve used them as the basis for my very first home-centered collection. A few pieces I’ve republished in their originally published form, but most have been reworked with slight tweaks in different fibers and colors, and I’ve added two brand new designs that have been percolating in the background for many months.

I hope you enjoy the look book for A La Maison No. 1. I thoroughly enjoyed photographing and putting it together. All of the design patterns can be purchased from my Ravelry Design store either individually or as a complete collection.

I once wrote in an Instagram line that home was where the cat and the hand-made blanket were located. As I think you’ll see from this collection, no truer words were written.