New book Straight From the Designer’s Hip

I am so pleased!

The newest offering from Straight From the Designer’s Hip group has just been released.

copyright Straight from the Designer's Hip

It’s Strapped for Bags Volume 3,which can be seen and ordered at Ravelry or at

Straight From the Designer’s Hip

It includes my design for a very cute little  crocheted copper wire bag.

When I was thinking about the bag that I wanted to design for the book,

it was important to me to come up with a unique and fun little bag that would

be an invitation for the readers to try something new.

I love crocheting wire and have made lots of jewelry with it,

so it was the natural choice for me for this book.

photo by Noreen Crone-Findlay copyright

The other designers in the book are Amy O’Neil Houck, Tammy Hildebrand, Vashti Braha,

Dee Stanziano, Doris Chan and Marty Miller. What a great group!

We didn’t set limits or themes when we decided to put our work together for Book 3, so, it’s always neat to see how the bags somehow, magically all work together.

And what fun bags they are…. each of them definitely carries the signature style of the designer that came up with it.

But how did we come together to make this series of books?

Well, as well as being designers and authors, most of us are also workshop teachers. And, we are all professional members of the Crochet Guild of America.

A few years ago, we got together for lunch at one of the national conferences of the Crochet Guild of America. Naturally, we were talking about our experiences with publishing. Someone said: You know…. we should publish some booklets ourselves…..

and one thing lead to another. So, here we are, with our 4th booklet.

We are lucky, in that we have some extremely gifted people in the group, who handle the wide diversity of chores that publishing a series of books  entails.

We are still in ‘beta mode’ so aren’t accepting submissions from other designers at this point. BUT, if we can do it, then why not other people, too? Go for it!