Crochet-A-Day

In an attempt to celebrate National Crochet Month, I thought I'd focus on crochet as much as possible for awhile. As much as I love to knit as well, I'm setting aside my needles for awhile to better showcase crochet and its creative potential.
I often make up my own designs as I go. The more you crochet, the easier it gets to create as you go. It differs from knitting in that you can easily tear out the stitches to a certain point and start over.
I haven't published many patterns because my main goal is to sell my own, finished designs. I have had some success selling the pattern for my Crocheted Market Tote and I'm often asked why I don't publish it for free on my blog. The answer is that I need to have some sort of income from my shop. I haven't been making very many small items to sell and this makes up for it. Etsy is full of sellers willing to make dishcloths and facial scrubs, so I tend to keep small items like that for local shows.
There are many sites that offer free crochet patterns. Google it and you'll see. The problem is, that when people learn to crochet, they scour the internet for free patterns. Many of these are copyrighted and not available to sell. The challenge is to learn the stitches and techniques and make your own designs.

I've had a link on the side of my blog for a long time now of The Crochet Works of Sally V. George. Her remarkable talent is painstakingly-detailed in the patterns she created. The website continues now, thanks to her family. I encourage anyone to make a donation through Paypal in order to keep the site going and continue to make Sally's works available to us all. While the patterns may look "old" to some, to me they are quite inspiring!