Today's feature is one of my favorites! I looove everything that Kate makes for
Small and Great. At
Patchwork, we chatted about how math comes in handy in coming up with crochet patterns, which I never knew! I took my time photographing practically every piece, because they're just so darn cute! In addition to her adorable crochet creations, she hand-dyes her yarn for hats and scarves. Totally multi-talented!
And lucky you, Kate is giving you the chance to
win one of her cute creations. I'm super jealous... You will get the chance to choose your favorite prize, so scroll down to enter the
giveaway!
Before that, you should definitely check out my interview with Kate, and not just because she's a wordy gal like me! I love the inspiration for her shop name, as well as the story of how she started making these amigurumi. Oh, and find out what amigurumi are!
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Tell me a little bit about yourself!
I've been doing arts and crafts
my entire life. My father is an artist (oil painting, he's a graphic designer by trade), and my mother has always been a handmade enthusiast (mainly knitting, but when I was growing up she did a lot of quilting and now is into furniture reupholstery, rehabilitating her "roadside treasures"). So as a child I was always around plenty of art supplies. I liked drawing best, but I did everything from painting to pottery. I always took art classes in and outside of school, up through AP art in high school.
I started crocheting only after a long dormant period of creating. I had gone to college thinking I'd major in studio art, and wound up taking not even one class in it (getting a low score in AP art was a major setback for me, and I really regret that I took it so hard!). Instead, I majored in sociology with a focus in media studies. I went on to work as a magazine editor in New York City, and later moved to California to pursue a graduate degree in sociology. Near the end of my graduate career (I made it almost all the way to a PhD and coauthored an academic book along the way), my mom taught me the basic crochet stitches while I was on a trip home back east in spring of 2011. It had always bothered me that I had never gotten the hang of knitting -- my mom is a great knitter, and her mother, whom I was very close to, was an amazing knitter -- but crochet came miraculously easily. Before that weekend was out, I'd taught myself granny squares, and within weeks I'd made an afghan!
I found lots of inspiration and kindred spirits on
Ravelry.com -- I had no idea so many people were into crochet, and that there were so many things you could do with it. My first amigurumi (Japanese for, more or less, soft knitted toy) was a very simple owl made for my husband, but after that, I took off. Between books and the internet, I taught myself all kinds of crochet techniques (Tunisian crochet, tapestry crochet, intarsia), and I soon started designing my own patterns for amigurumi.
Making amigurumi really turned a corner for me -- it reawakened this part of me that had been dormant for years. For the first time since high school, I find myself drawing all the time, and my patterns are born from these sketches. (I've also had to relearn some basic math and geometry that my high school self thought I'd never need to know later!) I was crocheting every day, and creating new things all the time, and pretty soon my friends' and families' homes (not to mention my apartment) were overflowing with the stuff.
When people I made things for would show my crochet to their friends (in particular, new moms -- I'm at the age where I make a lot of people baby gifts), they'd inevitably ask, "Is she on Etsy?" I only had a fuzzy awareness of Etsy at the time. But by last winter, disillusioned with academia and starting a new 9-to-5 job (I work for an internet startup), I started looking into it more seriously. I bought every book I could find on starting a handmade business, and on Groundhog Day (see, more animals!) Small and Great Crochet was born. It's funny, because it often feels to me that this is the last thing I would have wound up doing, but people who've known me the longest always say it absolutely makes sense.
