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This granny square crochet pattern was inspired by so many happy moments of connection, creativity, and laughter at the Crochet Guild Australia Conference in Sydney last month. Heightened emotion and yarny goodness filled the air as friends came together, both old and new, giving many little pockets of joy along the way!
It was wonderful to be around so many creatives all sharing a love of crochet and fibre and I was thrilled to get to meet makers, committee members, yarn retailers, publishers and particularly other designers as designing crochet patterns involves a lot of alone time at a computer. I cannot tell you how invigorating and joyous it was to connect with so many wonderful people!
My design is a square of crocheted canvas stitch which is also what I used for my Ever-Change Sweater. Add a bit of my signature slip stitch embroidery to embellish the granny square fabric and get a bit creative with a bit of needlework too! I used a 4ply cotton called Morris & Sons “Avalon” in 3 colours and the yellow is Morris & Sons laceweight “Maya” baby alpaca. I hope you enjoy making some for yourself, and keep an eye out for some other Pockets of Joy from a few other amazing designers and you can find out a bit more about that below…..
But first, here are a few conference highlights: There were 3 days of 3- or 6-hour workshops from both international and Australian crochet rockstars so HEAPS of choice for participants to revel in their crochet niche. There was also a yarn market to shop for crafty goodies, a winding station where you could get your new squishy skeins ready for hooking, crochet fashions on the field every day, speaker presentations on stage in the enormous lecture theatre, social events where you could meet with your favourite designers and catch up with friends, and to top it all off, a gala night with dancers, crochet finery, amazing food and fun!
For me, Day 1 was supercharged busy with setting up a stall in the Yarn Market….
Then teaching a 3-hour workshop on Getting into Garments (helping makers understand how to approach a crochet pattern to end up with a garment that fits at the end)…
Then running back to the stall for a few hours, then jumping into the lecture theatre to give a 40 min presentation talking about my journey as a designer, sharing heaps of slides and a few of my tips and insights about making and designing with crochet!
Then it was shoot off to the Welcome meet n greet event where attendees, designers and organisers could all settle in over drinks and nibbles! Phew!
Day 2 was chatting with heaps of new people at the Yarn Market and preparing for the fashion show at the gala event that night. The gala had us all in a tizz with glitzy outfits, awards to crochet community leaders, a dance troupe wearing crochet fashions through the decades and then the fashion show! I had 5 garments to saunter down the catwalk in and had (literally) to run to change outfits between them!
Day 3 saw me teach a second Getting into Garments workshop, then the afternoon was at the Yarn Market chatting to people and packing up.
We are so fortunate to have the Crochet Guild Australia to bring us together and much kudos to all committee members to create such a landmark event! So much opportunity for people in the yarn industry to network and for makers and designers to connect. I am looking forwards to next year’s conference already!
Attendees could book ahead for the whole 3 days event or could turn up for a day pass. Guild members enjoyed reduced pricing for the workshops and events plus some other perks too:
The speaker presentations were fabulous AND they were recorded on video. Guild members can not only access the video recordings of ALL the speaking presentations held in the lecture theatre (as they become available), but they can also enjoy some free patterns. Yes, that means you too can have access to these benefits if you elect to join the CGA yourself! You can find their website here.
Today I released the Pockets of Joy – Susannah on Ravelry as a paid PDF download but CGA members can enjoy it for free! It has my name at the end because there will be MORE Pockets of Joy granny square patterns from 3 other designer names: Dedri of Look What I Made, Petra of Black Sheep Crochet and Shelley of Shelley Husband Crochet!
We had a lot of fun getting to know each at the conference and this series of squares came about as a sweet idea to commemorate the event, our shared time in Sydney and meeting so many other wonderful crochet folks!
Shelley released her squishy Pocket of Joy granny square crochet pattern last week exclusively to her app community and the guild, I released mine today and Petra and Dedri will round our little series off by releasing their versions of Pockets of Joy granny square crochet patterns in their own way and in their own time. Here is Shelley’s square, a perfect mix of silly and happy, you can find out details of her app on her website here.
Are the squares designed specifically to be joined together? It’s the concept/theme that links them and we just interpreted that in our own individual way. So no, our individual designs do not have matching edge stitch counts, but hey, the beauty of granny squares is you can get creative and join them to make just about anything, right?
So, what did I make with mine?
Well, aside from the conference itself, I found additional inspiration from meeting Ruth Morris of the yarn/craft retailers Morris & Sons. She started her family craft business in the 70s, it’s still going strong 50 years on, and they produce their own range of yarns as well as retail some major brands! Ruth was a joy to meet and is still working hard to service her customers by making tapestry cushions for them, so I ended up joining my 2 granny square designs into a pin cushion for Ruth’s tapestry needles.
And here’s a little video of making it…
The Morris & Sons Avalon cotton and Maya alpaca yarns are so very soft and smooth they were a joy to handle too. Joy, joy, joy everywhere I tell you!
Ok, so that’s a wrap for this post. Cheerio from all of us:
Dedri, Shelley, Petra and myself!
Here is the Ravelry listing for Pockets of Joy – Susannah (with all the yarn details and usual pattern info), and here is a link for the CGA!
Happy stitching!
Susannah (Peppergoose)
Bit of admin to let you know I have legally changed my name to Susannah Kate, so please use Susannah going forward… many thanks,
&
Thank you to Morris & Sons for yarn support of this pattern!
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