#CRAFTS WITH ANASTASIA--A NEW PEN NAME AND A NEW KNITTING MYSTERY SERIES FROM AUTHOR MARY ELLEN HUGHES, AKA EMMIE CALDWELL

Emmie Caldwell is the pen name of Mary Ellen Hughes, national bestselling author of the Keepsake Cove Mysteries, the Pickled and Preserved Mysteries, the Craft Corner Mysteries, the Maggie Olenski Mysteries and now the Craft Fair Knitters Mysteries. Learn more her and her books at her website.  

How a Wicked Yarn Began and Grew

My protagonist of A Wicked Yarn, Lia Geiger, is an expert knitter, as is her long-standing group of friends, the Ninth Street Knitters, whose love of knitting joined them together. Having run out of people to knit for, Lia began running a booth for the group at the Crandalsburg Craft Fair to sell their knits but soon got into more than she bargained for.

 

I created Lia and all the characters in A Wicked Yarn, to tell a mystery story. But I made Lia an excellent knitter as one way for me to also create beautiful knits, but with much more ease and speed, not to mention skill.

 

I learned to knit as a child from my mother, as I’d guess many knitters have. My first attempt at about six, I think, was a scarf, and I do remember it growing wider and wider as it grew longer, which was not my intention. I kept no pictures of that.

 

I got a little better over the years, and when my husband and I were dating and we took up downhill skiing, I decided to knit him a ski sweater. My lack of experience led me choose a beautiful pattern but one that called for a double yarn of worsted and mohair. It took me a while (a subsequent engagement and wedding soaked up a lot of free time – no surprise!) but once I finished, I was delighted to see that it actually fit! Unfortunately, it was quite warm. Quite warm. Perhaps if we were living in Alaska, it might have gotten more use. But Maryland winters led my husband to beg off  wearing it except for a few ice skating sessions, and even then, since the skating rinks were indoors, he suffered.

The sweater has been in a drawer  more than not, since then, and though I did knit a few things for my children over the years, writing gradually took over my creative time.

 

Enter A Wicked Yarn. It’s always important for authors to know what they’re writing about, so when Lia got a commission for an alpaca sweater, I wanted to know all about alpaca yarn. The best way for me was to visit an alpaca farm, one where they bred alpacas, sheared their fleece, and turned it into yarn, all on the premises.

 

What a delight! Alpacas are absolutely wonderful animals – friendly, curious, and fuzzy. At the Painted Sky Alpaca farm in Maryland, they were well cared for and loved. After I spent time with many of the alpacas, the owners walked me through the process of washing and spinning alpaca fleece into yarn, some of which was then dyed, and some left in their natural colors.

 

After my time at Painted Sky, I wrote an alpaca farm into the plot of A Wicked Yarn, because why not? If I enjoyed my visit so much, I think my readers will too!

 

Of course, since it’s a mystery, I also slipped in a murder or two, and plenty of danger. But rest assured, no alpacas are harmed. My knitter? Well, it’d be telling too much to share what happens to her. But the mystery does get knotty, and Lia’s investigation grows a bit tangled for a while. But it all knits up in the end, knitters, craft fairs, alpacas, and all. A Wicked Yarn is, after all, a cozy mystery, perhaps as warm and cozy as an alpaca sweater, which was my goal. I hope you’ll enjoy it.

 

A Wicked Yarn:

A Craft Fair Knitters Mystery, Book 1

 

Mother's Day should be a cinch for the good folks of the Crandalsburg Craft Fair, and knitting enthusiast Lia Geiger has a good feeling about this year's yield. But things quickly get knotty when Lia's daughter announces she's quit her job and Lia finds herself tangled up in the murder of her best friend's ex-husband. While Belinda's alibi quickly gets her off the hook, nasty rumors spread throughout Crandalsburg that shroud the entire fair in suspicion.

 

Could the vendors be responsible for the murder of a man hell-bent on unraveling the fair just days before his death? Lia and her crafty group of Ninth Street Knitters must put down their needles to gather clues and save the crafting community they've grown to love

 

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CRAFTS WITH ANASTASIA--GUEST KNITTER AND AUTHOR MOLLY MACRAE

Award-winning author Molly MacRae spent twenty years in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Upper East Tennessee, where she managed The Book Place, an independent bookstore; may it rest in peace. Before the lure of books hooked her, she was curator of the history museum in Jonesborough, Tennessee’s oldest town. Today Molly live in Illinois, where she connects children with books at the public library and writes her Haunted Yarn Shop Mystery series. Learn more about Molly and her books at her website. She also blogs on the first Monday of each month at Amy Alessio’s vintage food and craft blog  and on the 23^rd of each month at Killer Characters.

Today Molly joins us to talk about knitting and her latest mystery.

I’ve learned how to knit – many times! And every time I learn again, I think how cool it is to manipulate a ball of string with a couple of sticks and end up with a scarf or a hat that almost fits someone (although I’m not sure who.)

I love going into yarn shops and being hit with all the colors and textures, all that potential wrapped in skeins and hanks and balls of fibers. My hands itch, not because of the wool, but for needles and patterns. And it’s not just knitting – I’ve dabbled in crochet, macramé, embroidery, dyeing, spinning, weaving, needle felting, and quilting. I haven’t tried lace-making, yet, but someday . . .

Okay, I’ll admit it; I’m a dilettante fiber enthusiast. I don’t keep up my skills. But I’m not a hopeless knitter. A few years ago, I actually knit a ruffled scarf. And for a couple of years, I’ve had the wool to make another one. I haven’t forgotten about the scarf, or that a friend in Maryland is waiting for it with a cold neck, but instead of knitting, I’ve been writing.

In my Haunted Yarn Shop Mysteries, Kath Rutledge, a textile preservation specialist, moves to Blue Plum, Tennessee, after losing her museum job and inheriting the Weaver’s Cat, her grandmother’s fiber and fabric shop. Kath isn’t me, but we have a few things in common – the museum background, a grandmother who owned a yarn shop, and a love for small towns in the mountains of eastern Tennessee. Like me, Kath let her life and profession interfere with knitting, but she remedies that with the move to Blue Plum. Lucky Kath! Lucky me, too, because through my writing, I can surround myself with characters who do everything with fibers I’d like to be doing myself.

I do have an advantage over Kath; I have sisters who know how to knit and do it regularly. Here’s one sister’s pattern for very easy spiral baby socks. After reading this pattern thirty-seven times, I know that even I can make a pair of these socks. But that won’t happen anytime soon, because Spinning in Her Grave, the third Haunted Yarn Shop Mystery comes out March 4^th, and I’m hard at work on Plagued by Quilt, book four, which comes out in December.

Cam’s Spiral Newborn Baby Socks (tube socks – no heels!)

Materials:

Self-striping fingering weight yarn (something soft and washable)

Four double-pointed # 2 needles

Tapestry needle

Loosely cast 30 stitches onto one of your needles. Divide the stitches between three needles. Being careful not to twist your stitches, join the ends, and begin to knit around for the cuff.

Cuff pattern: knit 1, purl 1 (k1, p1)

Continue for 2 inches

Spiral pattern:

Rows 1, 2, 3: k3, p3

Rows 4, 5, 6: k2, p3, k3

Rows 7, 8, 9: k1, p3, k3

Rows 10, 11, 12: p3, k3, p3

Rows 13, 14, 15: p2, k3, p3

Rows 16, 17, 18: p1, k3, p3

Continue the spiral pattern until your sock measures ½ inch less than the length you’d like your socks to be. The socks pictured are just about 5 inches long.

Shaping for toe:

Row 1: k4, k2 together

Row 2: k

Row 3: k3, k2 together

Row 4: k

Row 5: k2, k2 together

Row 6: k

Row 7: k1, k2 together

You should have 10 stitches left, and you’re ready to close the toe. Cut the yarn, leaving a 1 foot tail. Thread the tail onto your tapestry needle. Pull the needle and tail through each of your ten remaining stitches, removing the stitches from the knitting needles and gathering the toe of the sock.

Push the tapestry needle through the tip of the toe to the inside of the sock. Now turn the sock inside out, and use the tapestry needle to anchor the stitches firmly. Knot and snip the tail. Turn the sock right side out.

Now make the second sock. Or lots of them!

For larger size socks, cast on more stitches in multiples of 6 (i.e. 36, 42, 48, etc.)

Spinning in Her Grave

Kath Rutledge is settling in as the owner of the Weaver’s Cat, a fiber and fabric shop in Blue Plum, Tennessee. But nothing, not even the ghost haunting her shop, prepares her for the mystery that will leave the whole town spinning....

It’s time for Blue Plum’s annual historical festival, and everyone—including Kath and her fiber and needlework group, TGIF—is getting in on the action. Expert spinners are gathering, and a businessman has approached Kath about using the second-floor windows of her shop for part of a reenactment. But the reenactment ends in real-life bloodshed when local baker Reva Louise Snapp is shot—with a bullet from a modern-day gun.

Kath has her theories about who wanted to end Reva Louise’s life. But there’s also talk of a sniper stalking Blue Plum, and Kath’s shop is suspected to be the murderer’s hideout. Now Kath, her TGIF pals, and the gloomy ghost, Geneva, must unravel the mystery quickly, or someone else might be left hanging by a thread....

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