Staff Spotlight: The Yarn Whisperer

Where a love of creating something unique with your hands meets the urge to stay off screens, that’s where you’ll find this crocheter. A leader of our Downtown branch by day and a yarn whisperer in her free time, meet Kelsey!

Kelsey first learned to knit in ninth grade. Although she’d tell you crochet is the way to go when you’re first starting out because knitting was a SLOW process. So, a little over a decade ago, with the help of lots of online videos, she decided to do just that. Once she picked up a crochet hook, she never looked back.

Kelsey reaches for her crochet hook about 99% of the time because it gives her more freedom to create. As a little bonus, mastering crochet did help her step up her knitting game. With a hook in hand, Kelsey makes pretty much anything and everything, based on whatever mood strikes her.
 

“I love making stuffies, blankets, cardigans, and hats. In the winter, my boys are probably the warmest kids around – there’s definitely no shortage of handmade cold-weather gear in our house,” Kelsey shared.

You know that feeling when you can perfectly picture an item you want for yourself or maybe to give as a gift and the subsequent frustration of the hunt to find it? Crocheting helps solve that problem for Kelsey. When she couldn’t find owl-themed items when her youngest was a baby, she made them herself!
  Her stuffies are one of her specialties, and we can see why! (Peep the photos of those cuties.) Kelsey will also revisit her most-loved projects, like her skull shawl, because with every new colorway and skein of yarn, the finished product can look completely different. Her hobby has turned into the source of one-of-a-kind, priceless gifts. Like the elephant stuffie she made to comfort her grandmother while she was in the hospital or the neon orange moccasins for her brother.
 

“Last Mother’s Day, I made crocheted rose bouquets for my mom and mother-in-law featuring birthstone colors of all their children and grandchildren,” Kelsey explained. “While they were absolutely a labor of love, it was all worth it for a personalized piece they will cherish forever.”

Like with any hobby, it’s not always roses. While it’s common practice to do a gauge swatch when you start a project to confirm dimensions, Kelsey is either too stubborn or too excited to get started, so she almost always skips the step. This has yielded some ridiculously wonky sizes for the projects she’s attempting, but that just adds to the fun. And when all else fails on a project, it’s time to frog – rip it, rip it, rip the stitches out.

The creativity and uniqueness of every piece keep Kelsey’s hobby fresh. While she works from patterns most of the time, she doesn’t always follow them exactly. If she wants to make something but the pattern doesn’t exist, Kelsey will Frankenstein a few together to make it so! 
 

“If you can dream something up, there’s a pretty good chance you can figure out a way to make it out of yarn,” Kelsey shared with a smile.