I’m very excited to announce that you can now take crochet classes with me, no matter where you live. Last month I taped two classes with a great company called Sympoz.com. They professionally produced the classes, which are online and interactive and will be part of their new website, Craftsy.com. Their cool learning platform makes it easy for me to communicate with my students (and students to communicate with each other) via comments, photos and links. Plus, HD videos provide crisp detail if you have those “What stitch am I going into?” type of questions. And, when you don’t understand something, you can watch it over and over– virtual me will not get tired.

In Crafty Crochet Embellishments, I’ll walk you through a ton of quick and fun projects for your home + wardrobe, including edged baby blankets, pillowcases and towels; and we’ll explore flat flowers, dimensional flowers (for brooches), earrings and more. It’s great if you have just a little bit of beginner knowledge (I still go over all of the basic stitches, too!) and want to get going with some simple, satisfying projects. The class includes all of the patterns you need, and we’ll even work on reading stitch diagrams–each pattern includes them.

In Beyond Rectangles: Crochet Baby Cardigan, we’ll make the cardigan you see me holding above. It’s a simple, classic design with a bit of shaping here and there, and a great way to jump in to pattern reading and working fitted pieces that aren’t rectangular. The jump from scarves and blankets to fitted garments is not as far as you think, and once you take this class you’ll be ready to dive in to more complex projects, too! I show you tips and tricks throughout–with a special focus on yarn choice, gauge, blocking and other techniques that will give your work a professional finish. You need basic crochet skills for this one, but again, I do provide a stitch refresher in the course –just in case it’s just been a while since you’ve picked up your hook.

Here’s a pic of Noe wearing the cardigan I made during filming–she’s 19 months old, so the cardigan is quite snug+short on her (she’s wearing the 0-6 month size!, the course pattern also includes a 6-12 months size). Isn’t she darling? Even if you don’t have a little one of your own to crochet for, I am sure you will learn a lot from this class. And if you want to make the cat–the Crochet Lab (Learn to Crochet) course is coming soon, too–taught by Vickie Howell!

As a thank you to you, my blog readers, I’m able to offer you a special discount on the classes. Follow the links to sign for Beyond Rectangles OR Crafty Crochet Embellishments for  only $29.99 each (you must follow these links to get the discount!). I think that is an amazing deal for the amount of instruction you will receive, and you’ll have access to the course for as long as you want, at whatever time of day works for you. Head over to Sympoz to see the course trailers, they’ll give you an even better idea of what the class will be like. Hope to see you there!