Crochet Photos

A while back I got several emails from people suggesting I post photos of the crochet patterns included in my books on my website. Since there aren’t photographs of the finished products in the books, it did seem like a good idea. A good idea, but something I would have to focus on to complete, so I put it off.

The combination of my web guy saying he was going to Africa for six weeks and the fact that I was making some changes to my website finally got me to get it together to do the pictures. It sounds easy, particularly these days with digital cameras. Just snap a few pictures and upload them. Well, it isn’t quite that easy.

First, I couldn’t find any of the Filet Bookmarks from By Hook or By Crook, so I had to make another one. Ditto with the Granny Square Washcloth from Hooked on Murder, though it went a lot faster. Where to take the photos was also an issue. I thought of a bench in my yard that gets nice light, but finally turned my dinging room into my photo studio. The three french doors with a southern exposure let in good light. Then there was the matter of how to display the projects. The bookmark and granny square were pretty easy. My son lent me a black fuzzy board that made a good backdrop for the smaller pieces. I wanted to get a dress form to put the Hugs of Comfort shawl from Dead Men Don't Crochet on. Well, I was looking for an excuse to get one anyway. Joann’s had them on sale, but when I went to the local super store expecting to buy one, I found out they are by order only.

I couldn’t wait for the dress form - remember my web guy is off to Africa next Monday. So, my dining room chair got to wear the shawl. I used the same chair to drape the Cuddle Blanket from By Hook or By Crook over. That was after I got my cat off of the shawl and cuddle blanket. He had rolled them together and was on the way to turning them into a cat coccoon. He left his mark on the black fuzzy board, too. Thank heavens for those lint remover wands.

I popped my memory stick in my computer and looked through the photos. The cat was in on that too. Fourteen pound Rocky has this habit of coming up behind me and jumping over the back of my chair and landing on my shoulders, then working his way into my lap where he does his best to get me to pay attention to him instead of whatever I’m trying to do. So, it took longer than it could have to choose the photos and send them to my web guy.

There was a lot of back and forth between us getting it straight what photo went with what book. Who could blame him? There are a lot of hooks in the titles and he isn’t a crocheter.

Now at last the photos are in the right order and connected with the right book and out there for everyone to see at www.BettyHechtman.com.

Me and Martha

Even though I was tired from my Chicago trip and had a ton of things to do, I couldn’t resist when I saw the listing in the Sunday paper. Martha Stewart was doing a book signing for her craft encyclopedia at the Borders in Northridge.

I figured it was research since Molly Pink handles bookstore events in the crochet mysteries. I was curious to see what a real celebrity event was like. I was curious about Martha Stewart, too.

The newspaper said the event started at 3 and that’s when I arrived. There were tons of people there already. I heard a rumor that some people had gotten there at 6 a.m.. I found out the hard way that you couldn’t just get in line for the signing. There was a whole protocol set up. First you had to buy the book, then you stepped over to someone who checked your receipt and gave you a colored wrist band. I got a blue one and was told to hang around where I could hear the loudspeaker for an announcement for my group. I was also given a list of rules. The cut off number for wrist bands was 350. There would be no personalizing of books, and while we could take photos from the line, there would be no posing with Martha.

I found that the yellow wrist bands were already lined up, and the greens who followed them were hanging around waiting to be moved to the staging area. The blues were beginning to congregate behind the greens, so I joined them. Everybody was holding at least one heavy book.

I think it must have been an hour before the blues were moved into the staging area, but the time flew by. Most of the people in line were crafters and we all started talking. The woman behind me was a fellow crocheter and we talked granny squares. I handed out bookmarks for Dead Men Don’t Crochet.

At last we moved up and snaked around the bookshelves close to the signing table. Cameras came out and a bookstore employee checked that our books were all flapped with the front page tucked under the book cover to ensure the book would open right to the signing page.

A bookstore employee greeted each person in the line just as we got within sight of Martha, while a bunch of publicists and assistants hung around the table.

At last my moment was there. Martha looked just like she does on television. She said hello in a friendly voice. She noticed my crocheted flower pin and said I was obviously a crafter. I seized the moment and said I wrote a crochet themed mystery series. She countered by mentioning that they had a needlework encyclopedia coming out next year. She signed my book in green ink that perfecting matched the green in the book. Even after signing countless books, her handwriting was beautiful.

In retrospect, I realize I should have offered her a bookmark, but before I could think about it, my book was back in my hand and I was moving on to the next station where a man with big scissors was clipping off wrist bands and I heard an announcement that the purples were moving into the staging area.

The next day there was an article in the newspaper about the signing. Apparently it was the first time Martha had come to the San Fernando Valley in twenty years and the crowd came from all over, as far as fifty miles away. She was on the Tonight show that night and talked about the book signing and all the people who had showed up. It was neat to hear her referring to something I’d been to.

All in all it was a fun afternoon and I got a lot of ideas for my fictional bookstore events. The craft encyclopedia is great, filled with all kinds of things I’d like to make. And the perfect green ink signature makes it extra special.

I just hope that someday my blog sisters and I have book signings so popular we have to use color coded wrist bands to manage the crowd.

Aloha

I’m in Kona, Hawaii at Left Coast Crime. It is supposed to rain 11 days a year here. It was raining last night when I arrived and is raining again today. I am taking that as special. Not that the rain is bad here. Except that the wet pavement made my feet sleep out from under me this morning as I was carrying some bags back from the gourmet market. Not that that was too bad either. Some man came to help me up, apparently expecting the worst (he said something about how easy it was to break an elbow). I was fine. Not even a scrap or scratch. I got up and continued on back to the hotel.

This is the first conference that actually has my books in the onsight bookstore. It was pretty cool to walk in and see Hooked on Murder, Dead Men Don’t Crochet and Blue Schwartz and Nefertiti’s Necklace all on display. So when I have my signing time, there will actually be books somebody might want me to sign.

Last night on the flight I was crocheting the pouch purse for the fourth book. I love crocheting on a plane. It is like meditating. I don’t think, my fingers move and I totally relax. One of the fight attendants asked me what I was making. I explained about the crochet mysteries and gave both her and her partner flight attendant bookmarks for Dead Men Don’t Crochet. She got all excited about the book marks and the books, she wanted to give me an on the house drink. Hopeless non drinker that I am I declined. Instead she opened the snack drawer and gave me cheese and crackers and a bag of nuts which was a welcome gift as I got to the hotel late and food operations were limited. The gift became my dinner.

I love Hawaii. Every place I’ve been on the islands is great. This is my first trip to Kona. My room has a balcony with an ocean view and I could sit and look out forever. There are some side trip possibilities. I’m pretty sure I’m going to go whale watching. Ah, I looked up and the sun is beginning to come out even as I still here the tinkle of rain hitting something. I’m going to go look for a rainbow.

Another Lost Week

I thought the bug I had was gone last week, but it was only playing possum. Then I heard there was something going around that lasted two weeks. And I thought, bingo that’s what I have. Only I got a bonus of a few extra days.

I think it’s really gone this time. I certainly hope so. I’ve had my fill of watching television. I think if I have to watch Tom Cruise on one more talk show, I’ll scream. I watched Regis, Martha, Ellen, Oprah and too many entertainment news stories. I watched the four o’clock news, the five o’clock news, that national news, and the eleven o’clock news. And movies. One night I watched three.

I wanted to start putting the stamps and labels on the postcards for Dead Men Don’t Crochet, but only got as far as the mail merge to make the labels before my stomach started feeling ucky.

I worked on the fourth crochet mystery, but I couldn’t take looking at a computer screen, so it’s all handwritten. I was grateful to discover I could write even when I felt horrible, though there’s a good chance it sucks. I guess I’ll find out as I type it into the computer.

I did finish a scarf I started a long time ago. The yarn is a soft shiny pink and made from bamboo. I’m not sure if I like the scarf - it’s kind of heavy - but at least it’s done.

And with the exception of Wednesday night when I thought I might be dying, I managed to walk my dog every night. I always walk her at night and last night I saw something shadowy moving in the street. When it passed the lights on a fence, I saw it was a coyote. Thankfully it skittered past us. My dog Goldy didn’t make a peep. I’m sure the coyote saw us, but maybe when it saw the LED flashlight on Goldy’s collar, it got scared.

Then when we got home and I was just settling down to drink tea and watch more television, there was an earthquake. At first, I thought it was my cat Rocky who was sitting on the top of my chair, but then the news came on and it was the top story.

So how was your week?

Dead Men Don't Crochet

Tuesday was the official release date of Dead Men Don’t Crochet. It turns out that bookstores don’t like to do author events in December - that is unless you’re a superstar which I’m not.

But drop ins to sign stock or okay, so that is what I plan to do while I’m in icy Chicago.

57th Street Books was my first stop and they were expecting me. I’ve mentioned this bookstore before. It’s located in the basement of an apartment building and I set some of the action in my YA mystery Blue Schwartz and Nefertiti’s Necklace there. I also wrote an article about it for the Another Great American Bookstore feature in Byline Magazine.

These days 57th Street Books has a whole new identity going. Not only is it my favorite bookstore, but the Obama family’s as well. Actually my whole neighborhood is going through a flurry of excitement. There have been lots of Nobel Prize winners around here and well known writers like Saul Bellows, Sara Paretsky and the woman who wrote the Mrs. Pickerall Goes to Mars series. I can’t remember her name, but she lived in our old building. And my high school French teacher wrote the children’s classic Mr. Popper’s Penguins. But having a President- Elect seems to have turned a special spotlight on Hyde Park.

Laura Prail brought out a stacks of Hooked on Murder, Dead Men Don’t Crochet and Blue Schwartz and Nefertiti’s Necklace for me to sign. While I signed I asked her about the Obama effect on the bookstore. Of course, business was up and she said some people just came in wanting to buy a book from the store the President-Elect shops in. I thought it was kind of cool that without even knowing he was doing it, Obama was helping authors.

When all the books were signed, Laura showed me the poster of my bookcover hanging on the wall. She said she was going to make a display of my books below it. All I could think was wow. And as an afterthought I wondered if Michelle likes cozy mysteries.

Finding Kindred Spirits

I was so busy reading about Hugh Jackman being the sexiest man alive in People Magazine I lost track of time and all of a sudden I remembered it was Friday night and time to write my blog. I usually have a topic in mind, but this week my mind is blank.

While I was trying to think of something, I went to the Ravelry.com site. I’ve been meaning to do it for awhile and since I was basically stalling, it seemed like the perfect time. It has around 150,000 members who like yarn arts. I found out about it by chance when they started a discussion group about Hooked on Murder and one of the people in the group emailed me and told me about it.

You have to be a member of Ravelry.com to take part in a discussion group and at least at that time there was a waiting list. I finally moved up the line and became a member. It was very cool to go to the discussion group and read the posts. It also felt a little odd to have people talking about my characters and which guy they preferred for Molly. Some people gave casting suggestions in case it ever became a movie. It was fun to see how they pictured my characters. I never would have thought of Meryl Streep for CeeCee Collins.

Tonight when I went to Ravelry.com, I looked at some of the other groups. There are zillions of them from all over the world - and even one dedicated to my little corner of the San Fernando Valley.

Another group is run by the Crochet Liberation Front. They gave me an jokey award for Hooked on Murder. Something about setting your picot free. Knitters have lots and lots of novels and mysteries. Crocheters only have me and Bendy Carter. I decided to join the discussion group and left an introduction.

Now I just hope I can find my way back to the groups I just joined.

Real Versus Imaginary

When I turned in the manuscript for Hooked on Murder my editor asked me if there was a bookstore in Tarzana that readers might think was the one in the book. I told her not to worry. There are two country clubs in Tarzana and it is where Brittany Spears came to shave her head, but there are no bookstores.

The other day a woman sent me an email and asked if I was going to post of photo of the charity afghan that appears in Hooked on Murder. I was sorry to disappoint her, but the afghan like the bookstore only exist in my imagination.

I began to think about Molly’s Tarzana versus the real deal. The street names are the same, but all the businesses are factitious. I took an adorable building I saw in Carmel and mentally moved it to Tarzana to become the Cottage Shoppe where lots of the action in Dead Men Don’t Crochet takes place. I do know exactly where it would be and am always a little disappointed when I see the lackluster building that is really in that spot.

I love the café and cupcake place I created and only wish they really existed. I’d be a good customer for sure.

The other day my son and I went for a walk in the nearby mountains. We always park at the end of a residential street and then walk into the Santa Monica Mountain Conservancy. Just before the street dead ends there is a driveway that hugs the curve of the mountain. In my Tarzana that driveway leads to the house where the murder in By Hook or Crook takes place. I have spent so much time imagining that house I expect to see it when I look down the long road. But there in no old two-story Spanish style house with a red tiled roof. The actual house is barely visible and not even on the same side of the driveway. And yet, in my mind I can see the dark wood floors and huge pots of mother-in-law tongue plants, the stairway to the second floor, and the bedroom with the victim sprawled in her bed.

I might change the house, but I would never touch the view we get from our walk. I couldn’t possibly better that in my imagination. Picture a valley ringed by mountains turning purple and gold as the sun slips behind them. Streets like red and white ribbons of light that cut through the areas of puff ball trees. All across the valley twinkling lights are coming on. Houses on the ridge below us, look like miniatures as does the car on the street in front of them.

I know the view well enough to know the tiny spot of blinding white lights belongs to the parking structure at Topanga Mall. And all the way across the valley and part way up the mountains on the other side, there is a line of orangish lights. They belong to the park in Porter Ranch where you get the same view I’m seeing but in reverse.

Behind us the dirt road and hillside melt into the low light and we hear the eerie cries of coyotes thinking about dinner. Time to go home.

Changes

Sometimes it’s good to break out of habit and do things differently. For Hooked on Murder, Dead Men Don’t Crochet and By Hook or Crook, my pattern of working has been pretty much the same. I would drink my morning coffee and handwrite on a yellow legal pad. Then sometime later I would type what I’d written into my computer.

It seemed to always take longer to type in what I’d written and I would end up continuing with the yellow pads, while trying to catch up with putting everything into the computer. It was easy to get the yellow sheets mixed up and there was the issue of reading my handwriting.

So, as I began my fourth book for now titled Murder and the Marshmallow Stitch, I thought I would cut out a step. No more yellow pads. I’d just go write to typing it in the computer. Sure that it would be faster, I tried working that way for a month. Usually I wait until I finish the first draft to read what I have, but this time, I started reading after completing three chapters.

I’m glad I didn’t wait. It was obvious when I read the fourth time I’d stopped in mid sentence and started the beginning over again that going right to the computer just wasn’t working. Oddly enough, it wasn’t faster either. When I work on the yellow pads, my pen can’t seem to move fast enough. Not so when it was my fingers on the keyboard.

So, this morning, I pulled out my pile of yellow pads and found a nice pen and started handwriting from where I’d left off typing.

So maybe it was good to try something different, but the old way worked better.

I had different experience with a crochet project I just started. I want to make a pair of wrist warmers. I happen to have very long arms and sleeves never cover my wrists, so aside from being cute, they seem useful. Generally crochet starts with a row of chain stitches, but this pattern mixes the row of chain stitches with the first row of double crochets. In essence you do the foundation chain stitches and the first row at the same time. They are called extended stitches and though I’ve seen them a few times before, it seems to be a new idea. I mentioned them to the leader of my crochet group and she had never heard of them.

At first the directions looked confusing. But as I did the first row, all of a sudden I understood what I was doing and it made perfect sense and was much easer than making the chains stitches and then doing the first row. Now I’m curious to see if I can change other patterns into using these extended stitches.

This time the new way might just change how I crochet from now on. I guess it’s good to have an open mind.

Food for Thought

My family’s favorite part of the crochet mysteries are the recipes. They are my official tasters and love their job. They love it so much that both my husband and son are urging me to put in more than one recipe per book.

In all fairness, I used to cook a lot, and I guess they miss it. Okay, I don’t guess, I know they miss it because I’m always hearing about what I used to make. But back to the recipes in the books.

Hooked on Murder (which I found out just went into a second printing) features Helen’s Pound Cake. Helen was my mother and the pound cake was her all occasion favorite to make. My mother always made a big deal out of birthdays, and she liked to make cakes for people who normally wouldn’t have had a birthday cake.

I followed in her footsteps and the pound cake became a regular in my baking repertoire. Even so, I wanted to bake it again when I was adding the recipe to the book. I was including a recipe for butter cream icing and planned to ice the cake when it was cool. But my husband and son were so excited about an actual home made cake in the house, pieces of it started disappearing before it stopped steaming. By the time it was cool enough to ice, there was a little over a slice left. I had to make the full amount of icing to check how it turned out, but there is only so much butter cream icing you can put on one piece of cake. So, I trashed the rest. I’m still hearing about that. I didn’t think there was much you could do with a bowl of icing, but they are still tossing ideas out about what they could have done with it.

I included a recipe for cheesecake cupcakes in the Dead Men Don’t Crochet. I don’t have quite the same emotional connection with that recipe. It was one I came up with a long time ago, long before cupcakes were such an in item. I made several batches of them when I was checking the recipe. The recipe made eighteen of them and with the buttery graham cracker crust and the cream cheese top, they were rich and delicious. They lasted a little longer than the pound cake.

The third book now called By Hook or By Crook has a recipe for California Noodle Pudding. You can eat it hot or cold, as a side dish or a main course for breakfast. It has fruit and nuts and a little bit of sugar and vanilla, so it could almost be a dessert. It was my standard pot luck entry and so good I’d find myself saying mmmm when I ate it. This is another reason I don’t cook that much anymore. I like my own creations too much.

When I was in Chicago, I spent time going through my mother’s recipe file. I found all kinds of good stuff like a chocolate cake made with mash potatoes, and another made with yeast. Then there was one she called the Truant Officers Carrot Cake. I’m guessing that since my mother worked in the office of an elementary school, that’s who she got the recipe from. But I decided to go with one of my mother’s party creations. Nobody liked to give a party more than my mother. She always said she’d be planning her next party in the midst of her current one.

Since we basically had no money, my mother always made everything and generally something inexpensive. My parents had lots of brunch parties with waffle. For evening events, she came up with a sweet and a savory variation of appetizer puffs. I’m going to use the recipes for both in the fourth book. After she baked the small puffs, she’d fill some with crab salad and the others with homemade custard and a dollop of whipped cream. Just reading over the recipe reminded me of her standing in the kitchen, stirring the puff batter in a saucepan (you have to heat some of the ingredients). She would say they were so easy to make and then worry they weren’t going to turn out. My mother always worried that whatever she cooked wasn’t going to turn out.

Of course, everything always did.

Photo Opp

It started because I wanted to be like my blogsisters and include a photo in this weeks entry. Since I’m the I.T. person at my house – yikes what a frightening thought – I thought I would just monkey around and figure out how to do it.

I thought I’d try a practice run before I actually tried to put a photo in my blog. Of course, then I couldn’t think of any kind of photo to look for. Crochet, I thought finally. I’ll find a photo of hooks or yarn or some finished item. I found a photo on of some Irish crochet which was pretty and actually is featured in Dead Men Don’t Crochet so it was relevant.

There is no point in going through the boring details, but all I was able to do was save the photo to my computer. At the end of this I am going to see if I can move it from there to here.

But reasoning there must be a way to take a photo from a site and plunk it right into a blog, I decided to try a photo from somewhere else.

All I know is I ended up freezing my computer so bad even ctrl alt delete didn’t help. I had to push the on button to shut it down. Luckily no permanent damage. By now I had wasted all my potential blog writing time.

So, here goes. If it works, you’ll see a lacy photo of Irish crochet. If it doesn’t ... I don’t even want to go there.

The photo was supposed to go down here. Having it appear on top takes away all the suspense. I've seen photos in other parts of blogs. How did they get there?

I did notice as I was adding the picture there was something about getting photos from the web which makes me think I was trying to do it backwards. Okay, there's always next week.

Handmade versus Store-Bought

I belong to a knit and crochet group that meets once a week. Our leader Paula always reads something from a book of knitting thoughts. Most of them are appropriate for crochet too, except maybe when the author commented on how wrong crochet was – but that’s another story.

A few weeks ago, Paula read a piece about why people bother spending hours and hours making something when they could just go buy the same scarf or afghan at the store.

It made me think about it. There is definitely something magic about watching a ball of yarn turn into some usable item. But it’s more than that. There is something about a handmade item that a store bought one can never measure up to even if it is more perfect than the slightly crooked edge of the handmade version.

I think when you make something, you put something extra in it. Call if love, your vibrations, or your feelings – the item carries something of you with it. Why else would my agent Jessica Faust tell me she likes to use the pot holders her grandmother made even though they are old and stained. Why else would Karen write a post to my last week’s blog and mention the crocheted items she has from her grandmother and how she wants to learn to crochet so she can leave things for her grand kids. It isn’t the what the items are, it’s about who made them.

I read a post on the Crochet Partners list about a woman who had lost someone close and the people in her office wanted to do something for her and so they got together and crocheted a blanket. She kept it on her chair at work and wrapped it around herself and took it home and did the same. It was as if the feelings, the caring, and the time the makers had put into it had all became part of the blanket and it helped the woman through a terribly painful time. Just buying a blanket no matter how lovely would never have done the same.

In my crochet series, the Tarzana Hookers are always making something for charity. In HOOKED ON MURDER they all make squares that are joined into an afghan for an auction to raise money for a pet charity. In DEAD MEN DON’T CROCHET they make shawls they call Hugs of Comfort for women at a shelter. In DEATH AND DOILIES they make book marks for a library sale and blankets for traumatized children. As I wrote about their efforts, I realized how much more meaning there is to donating something that has been handmade.

Obviously it doesn’t have to be crocheted to have meaning. Anything handmade is the same. It is all about putting something of yourself into the making. My mother didn’t knit or crochet. Her only craft work was a few needlepoint pieces she had turned into pillows. And every time I look at them, I think of her. My husband treasures the toy dog his mother made even if it’s head is not completely attached anymore.

And there is a gift for the makers as well. What could be more satisfying than knowing you’ve created something that is going to mean so much to someone else? Somewhere a preemie is going to be cuddled by a pink hat with a pom pom you made. A friend’s spirits are warmed by the scarf you made just for her in her favorite shade of purple. Or your grandchild naps peacefully under the sunny yellow coverlet you made.

Handmade things always come from the heart.