NatCroMo 2016, March 7: Kelbourne Woolens

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The Crochet Express National Crochet Month Blog Tour

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Welcome to Crochetville’s fourth annual National Crochet Month (NatCroMo) blog tour, taking place each day of March 2016. Join us as we take a virtual tour on our passenger steam train, The Crochet Express, visiting crochet designers, crochet-friendly local yarn stores, and yarn companies, and offer some fun giveaways.

Today’s Posts: Justyna Kacprzak | Susan Lowman | Annelies Baes | Kelbourne Woolens | Daily Giveaway

Want to Chat about the Tour?

Part of the fun of taking a passenger steam train trip is talking with your fellow passengers. This year, we’re providing two locations where our passengers can get to know each other. We’d love to hear about your favorite things you’ve discovered on the tour and see photos of your current crochet projects. You’re invited to join us daily for virtual cocktails/appetizers and dinner. (We’ll be sharing links to some fabulous recipes!)

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Kelbourne Woolens

Crochetville is very proud to have Kelbourne Woolens with us today as one of the featured yarn companies on our 2016 Designer Blog Tour in honor of National Crochet Month (NatCroMo).

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About Kelbourne Woolens:

by Courtney Kelley

Kate and I founded Kelbourne Woolens in 2008 to distribute The Fibre Co. yarns in North America. We had been working in yarn stores for years, and through that experience came to know The Fibre Co. yarns and their founder, Daphne Marinopoulos. We began working together to create a line of knitting patterns for The Fibre Co, and the relationship grew from there. We have been designing, writing, teaching, and creating beautiful yarns for the past 8 years – and loving every minute of it!

Kate and I are die hard knitters, truth be told. Though we both learned to crochet as kids, we didn’t really gravitate to it the way we did to knitting. One day, while chatting about summer plans I mentioned that I really wanted to spend some time doing more crochet, to really get a hold of the craft and master it. A seed was planted, and we spent the next couple of weeks devising a campaign to rediscover crochet for ourselves: Crochet Summer. In 2014, we spent the entire summer crocheting, sharing our progress, experiments, and designs on Instagram with the hashtag #crochetsummer2014. Others started to share our enthusiasm, and sharing their own projects and crochet patterns using the hashtag. Through our Crochet Summer project we have designed a few crochet patterns, but more importantly we have learned a lot! We repeated crochet summer again in 2015, getting crochet designer Cal Patch in on the action by working with us to design a few easy crochet items for our blog.

Also in 2015, we added a new feature to Crochet Summer by creating some new Tips and Tricks designed specifically for crocheters. Kate has compiled a few tutorials to help demystify some of the trickier parts of crochet that she encountered. You can view all of our tips and trick posts here. We began by looking at Crochet Summer as a visibility campaign geared towards knitters who may not be very confident in their crocheting abilities, but it has grown to be so much more. I look forward to seeing everyone’s amazing work each summer, and we love knowing we’re helping to create a space for crocheters to show off their stuff. It’s been a lot of fun, and we have gotten great feedback from participants! We’ll be doing another Crochet Summer this year, so stay tuned to the blog for details.

We are teaching a few crochet classes this year at Interweave’s Yarn Fest as well, geared towards beginners and beginner-intermediate crocheters. My personal favorite is Granny Square Madness, where we’ll be delving into granny squares in all their variations, and crochet mandalas. We will also be teaching Kate’s triangular shawl, Asticou Terrace, available here as a free pattern. It’s a simple triangular granny square – a true classic. Kate also developed a Granny Square Triangle Tips + Tricks tutorial last summer when working on the design. If you need a little guidance to make your own, check out the tutorial here.

We hope to see some of you at Yarn Fest, and be sure to join us this summer on Instagram for Crochet Summer 2016!