First Blog

This my very first blog, so here goes....

People keep asking me if I really crochet. Actually the whole idea for Hooked on Murder started with granny squares – or more correctly my desire to learn how to make them.

For anyone not familiar, a granny square is a crocheted square that has open and closed spaces, usually with a middle of colorful yarn and the last row or two done in black. They are commonly joined together to form afghans. To me they were pure magic. I couldn’t figure out how you could start with a circle of stitches and end up with a square or how there could be those open spaces without the whole piece collapsing.

I have always made things. I taught myself how to make doll clothes when I was a kid. Eventually I made all my clothes and my mothers. Someone taught me how to knit when I was in college and I made a dress on huge wooden needles with four strands of yarn. I have a degree in fine art. But somehow I never learned how to crochet.
Since the 70s, I have been lugging around books and magazines with granny square patterns convinced that someday I would learn how to make them.

Flash forward a bunch of years. I was walking down the pretend street inside Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. I love toys and couldn’t pass up going into FAO Schwartz. I also love kids’ kits, my thinking being if the directions are aimed a ten year old they ought to work for me.

I rode the escalator up and was walking across the second floor through all the kids art kits when I saw something that made me stop. There was an adorable little blue suitcase surrounded by a cardboard banner with a granny square scarf on it. When I read the banner and saw the words Learn How to Make Granny Squares, I couldn’t buy it fast enough

I waited until I was back home and I took out the directions and the plastic hook. I’m embarrassed to admit there was a certain amount of nervous sweat and shallow breathing as I tried to follow the directions. I learned that sometimes with crochet you have to go on faith and just keep following the directions even if you have no idea what you’re doing. My first attempt ended in a three cornered square, but it was close enough for me to understand the basic structure.

Of course, I tried again and that time my square had all its corners. I was awed by my own achievement and became a granny square maniac. I made them over and over until I didn’t need directions anymore.
Around this time I got the idea of combining crochet with a mystery. While there was no guarantee the book would succeed, I knew that writing it would give me the incentive to learn more about crochet. And all the time I spent working with yarn and all the money I spent buying the yarn and all the money I spent buying books explaining what to do with the yarn would all be justified because it was research.

It turned out to be a win-win.

My crocheting took off and the book became a series and found a home at Berkley Prime Crime.

And now I thank my lucky stars everyday because I get to do two things I love, write and crochet. There’s just one problem – dealing with my yarn habit.