Year of Projects: Crochet Master Class – Book signing at Lion Brand Yarn Studio

(This post is part of my Year of Projects: Crochet Master Class series.  You can find my other posts in this series here.)

I mentioned on Wednesday that I was planning to take classes with Margaret Hubert and Jenny King this weekend at the Lion Brand Yarn Studio‘s Masters Weekend.  What I didn’t know at the time was that there was a book signing scheduled with four of the masters featured in Crochet Master Class: Lessons and Projects from Today’s Top Crocheters on Thursday evening.  I was lucky enough to get a (free) ticket to attend this awesome event.

Originally, my plan for this week’s year of projects post was to talk about my classes over the weekend.  But, I realized that I have way too much to say for one post, so I will be spreading out my full Masters experience over several posts.  (Secret ulterior motive: I found out about Blogtoberfest, 2011, where you attempt to blog every day in October, through this post by Evelyn at Project: Stash.  Since by strange coincidence, I had already blogged every day this month, I decided to join in.  If I tell you about everything in this post, what will I talk about for the rest of the month?)

Have you ever wondered why this book shows up in an Amazon search of Crochet Master Class?  This secret was revealed by Rita Weiss, who opened the book signing with a presentation on Crochet Master Class.  Although I’ve been a big fan of the work of Rita Weiss and her long time colleague, Jean Leinhauser, I never previously had the pleasure of seeing Rita in person.  Rita actually has a fabulous sense of humor and had several great one-liners in her presentation.

Rita shared that Crochet Master Class was a dream of Jean Leinhauser’s for a long time.  It was their dream to create a book that would thank crocheters for finding new uses for hooks and resurrecting old arts.  It would also honor great crochet masters while allowing them to each share a skill.  Rita told how she and Jean identified the different masters and then collected original projects for the book for 2 years.  The original idea was to include a multi-page gallery of color photographs of each masters’ work. However, just as the book was about to be published, Rita and Jean were informed that the publisher was “getting out of crochet” and the project was dropped!  Luckily, they had already been paid .

It took Rita and Jean another year to find a publisher, and they were able to keep all of the crochet masters involved.  The new publisher, Potter Craft, decided to shrink the size of the project gallery and re-shoot the pictures.  Apparently, Rita and Jean came to refer to the project as “the book from hell.”  I don’t know about you, but I’m so glad they stuck it out!  This is really the most interesting crochet book I’ve seen in ages.

After the presentation, it was time for the signing.  A lesser known fact about me is that I get very nervous when I’m meeting new people (in general) and even more nervous when I’m meeting new people that I admire tremendously.  (I’m totally comfortable with public speaking though – I’ve presented to groups of over 350 people!)  I almost snuck out and didn’t go to the book signing.  I was able to remind myself that I couldn’t miss this chance to meet these four wonderful talents, so I decided to ease my nerves by looking through the yarn .  I finally made my way over to the table, and introduced myself to Jenny King, Margaret Hubert, Tatyana Mirer, and Rita Weiss.  Wow, what an incredible evening!  Even though I was basically a blubbering idiot when speaking to each woman, they were all quite friendly.

And it was all worth it, because now I have the coolest copy of Crochet Master Class out there…

Awesome!  For more Year of Projects posts, check out When Did I Become a Knitter.

To check out the 200+ bloggers participating in Blogtoberfest, visit Tinnie Girl’s blog.  To find out about Blogtoberfest giveaways, visit this post on the Curly Pops blog.

Reminders:

• There’s still time to enter the giveaway for Val Pierce‘s Crochet Bears and Knitted Bears: All Dressed Up! here.
• If you want to learn to crochet or improve your skills, you can still join in on my Crochet 101 crochet-a-long.  For details, read this post.

Tags: blogtoberfest 2011, come blog a long, crochet master class, curly pops, jenny king, lion brand yarn studio, margaret hubert, potter craft, project: stash, rita weiss, tatyana mirer, tinnie girl, when did i become a knitter, year of projects, YOP11-12