Nancy Nehring

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Designer and author Nancy Nehring tells about her life, and work, her antique hook collection, why she believes crochet was invented in the 19th century, and why plus sizes are so tricky.

DORA: Nancy, you are one of the most revered people in the industry, for many reasons, one being that you do so many different textile crafts.  Tell us which ones you do.

NANCY: I do several types of embroidery, sewing garment-making and crochet.  The one I do least is probably knitting.

DORA:  Where did your interest in needle arts come from?

NANCY:  My grandmother.  She did embroidery and crochet as well as knitting.  She started to teach me as a child, but I was left-handed and she was right-handed.  She could get me started, but as I would progress it would get more difficult.  So I did more embroidery and sewing and didn't get into crochet until I picked up a  video at the library one day.  I could watch them go through the process, then stop the tape and figure out how to turn it around before going on.

DORA:  Were you quite young at this time?

NANCY:  I can remember embroidering flower sets for tea towels for my mother at around 10 or 12.

DORA:  Did your mom do any of these crafts?

NANCY:  My mom did none.

DORA:  Where is your family from?

NANCY:  They live in Iowa.  My grandmother's parents immigrated from Germany.  I asked her about her origins and she said she never knew her grandparents.

DORA:  When did you develop a passion for needlework?

NANCY:  In junior or high school I was always tall.  In rural Iowa there wasn't much clothing available for tall women.  I made almost all my own clothing except for jeans and stuff.  In fact in high school, I was even doing custom tailoring for other people in the neighborhood, making them slacks for example. 

DORA:  Do you consider yourself self-taught?

NANCY:  A lot of it was, I studied a lot of books.

DORA:  Then you went into a completely different career.

NANCY:  When I got out of high school, my parents actually took bets on whether I'd major in home economics or science. It seemed obvious that you could make a living as a chemist but I never could figure out how you could make a decent living as a home economist. 

DORA:  Yeah, tell me about that one when you figure it out!

NANCY:   I ended up going into chemistry and worked for the U.S. Geological Survey working on hot springs and volcanos for about fifteen years.

DORA:  Sounds fascinating!

NANCY:  I loved doing the work.

DORA:  And then you stopped?

NANCY:  Yes, when I wanted to have kids.  The hot springs systems I was working with were actively depositing heavy metals.  Most of the heavy metals are toxic.  I was around a  lot of mercury, lead, arsenic, cadmium.  It wasn't the job I wanted to do when I had little kids at home.  So I just quit.

DORA:  And you never went back.

NANCY:  No, I've toyed with the idea.  I still do some science volunteer work at a regional park   and inventory plants.  They use that information to make trail guides and decide where to place new trails.  You can do a little volunteer work in the field.

DORA:  I've met a few other expert needle workers who are also scientists.

NANCY:  It doesn't surprise me.  When I first started teaching needlework it was for the Embroiderers Guild of America.  Probably a quarter to a third of the teachers there have a science background of some sort.  I think it's because by the time they are ready to return to the field after having kids, there are no part time jobs available in the field.  They say they're hurting for chemists and biologists, and yet even though a third of the people doing these jobs are women, the companies are unwilling to make provisions for part time positions, or shared positions.

DORA:  When did you launch the second career you are having now?

NANCY:  When I quit working as a chemist, I was reading Threads magazine one day.  I had over forty published papers as a chemist and I thought, I could write an article like this for Threads.  I wrote one and they published it.

DORA:  Cool!

NANCY:  It was an article on hand-made textile buttons which ended up being part of my Fifty Heirloom Buttons to Make book. That's how the book got started.

DORA:  I was about to ask you about that.  Did the book come soon after, or did take a while?

NANCY:  It was three of four years in the making.  My intent was always to make this into a published book.  It turned out that all these button were made by illiterate women, so the patterns were never written down.  At the time I also belonged to the National Button Society.  I would see a lot of antique textile buttons that were decomposing in button boxes.  They weren't as durable as the metal or wood ones.  They'd get all banged up and were falling off of their molds. No one was collecting them -- no museums.  I felt it was going to become a lost art if someone didn't write it down.  They were in collections of people I knew through the button society.  Occasionally you'll see them on vintage garments.  But the buttons are the first thing to fall off.

DORA:  So you went into a big historical project.  How did you go about it?

NANCY:  I basically had to reverse engineer them.  I would get five identical buttons that had probably come off of a garment.  I'd start taking them apart, writing down the instructions backwards until I got lost or got to a the damaged section.  Then I'd start on the next one.   Once I had the instructions written, I'd turn around and try making it from the top down.  After a while I got good enough at it that I could look at the button and see how it was made.  I didn't have to take them apart any more.

DORA:  I have that book and love it, but I never made button from it. It's just because as a professional designer I don't have time for fun projects like that.

NANCY:  Some day you will.

DORA:  Oh yes!  I was so impressed with that book, the way it looks and the clarity of the instructions.

NANCY:  Even to this day it's still my favorite book.  To have that book accepted and in print, it's still a thrill to me today.

DORA:  I bet.  What was the response from the public?

NANCY:  It was a hard sell for the publishers.  It took me two years to get a publisher for that book, because it didn't fit into the classic sections you see in a store like Barnes & Noble  -- it wasn't a sewing book, it wasn't a knitting book, it wasn't a quilting book, it wasn't truly a craft book.  They had a lot of trouble placing it.  I think over the years it's sold between twenty and thirty thousand copies.

DORA:  That's excellent.  What other books have you done?

NANCY:  After I finished the button book, I told the editor, "It's been nice knowing you, I have no more things I want to write about, so I won't be publishing any more."  She laughed.  I thought, because I don't knit, I'll never do a knitting book, and I'm not interested in biography, so I'll never do a biography.  Turns out I did a book called The Lacy Knitting of Mary Schiffman, which is a biography of this woman through her lifetime of knitting with knitting patterns interspersed in it.   After that I decided we're never saying never again.

DORA:  I don't even know that book.  What was special about her work that made you want to do it.

NANCY:  She was almost ninety years old when I met her, and she had collected lace knitting patterns for almost her entire life, since she was about 15 or so.  She had a collection of over 500 patterns, which became the basis of the collection that's now being maintained by the Lacy Knitters Guild.  At the time when she first started The Lacy Knitters she felt lace knitting was a dying art.  No one was doing it any more, you couldn't get the supplies for it.  Her whole goal was to maintain lace knitting as an art so that it wouldn't die out.

DORA:  Hasn't that changed though?

NANCY: Oh yeah, thanks to her and a lot of other people.  You take these things that were Victorian women's crafts, and if some time between then and now they couldn't make that leap from craft to art, they die out.

DORA:  How interesting!  What do yo consider that leap?

NANCY:  When you get people who consider themselves artists, who are doing it for the visual effect of it, not for an edging on a pillow case or a doily, but  as a visual art, for display in a museum.

DORA:  And this happened with lace knitting?

NANCY:  Probably not until about the 1990s.  It's really been quite late that it has happened.  The key people are Elizabeth Zimmerman, Mary Schiffman, Barbara  Walker.  The other thing that happened along with it becoming an art, was people started to study how it's technically done, to engineer it and understand how all the different pieces are put together.

DORA:  That's so much was happening with crochet now.

NANCY:  Crochet is twenty years behind knitting in making that leap from a craft to an art.

DORA: Wouldn't you say the Irish crocheters were artists?

NANCY:  Yes certainly people like Maire Treanor and Kathy Earle, they have taken it to that level.

DORA:  I'm also thinking of the women from the early twentieth century when Irish Crochet really blossomed.

NANCY:  I agree with you to some extent, but at that time it was being made to make money, as piecework, not as art work.  It was made as a textile, not a piece of art.  It was being purchased as art work by high society women on the east coast, particularly those of Irish descent.  They were buying it as philanthropy, to help poor people.

DORA:  Since we're getting into history how, tell me about your hook collection.

NANCY:  Well, I've got about three to four hundred in what I call the "good collection."  And I also have fistfuls of old Boye hooks.  I really was inspired by Annie Potter's book on the History of Crochet .  She had several pages with beautiful old hooks.  A lot of the reason why I'm fascinated by the hooks goes back to the scientist in me.  When I look at the hooks and date them, a lot of it's based on  material science, what processes were available at the time, what materials were available at the time. For instance, the very oldest hooks, the steel to make the real old Irish crochet hooks, they made the iron into needles, and then converted the needles one at a time or in small batches into steel.  It was a very slow and imprecise  process, and you can see that because you end up with these little tiny hooks with handles that are not steel on them.  Some hooks were made from needles that they broke the eye out of. Others, when they made the needle they didn't make the full eye, they just knocked off half the eye and made a hook to begin with.  Then in the late 1860s a man invented a process to make steel in big batches,  using a blast furnace like we do today.  At that time instead of iron cannons for weaponry you could have a steel cannon, which didn't rust as fast and weren't as heavy, less inclined to break  when they were fired.  So at that time  you could suddenly mass produce crochet hooks by stamping them.  They could make steel of varying hardnesses, steel for making machines, and those machines would use softer steel to stamp things out of.   You can see all this in the crochet hooks, and  use it to precisely date the hooks.

DORA:  Wow!  What about the very decorative wooden hooks?

NANCY:  Those are much harder to date.   Wood was not used much for crochet hooks until after World War II.  Before then people did not use big yarns, so the big old wood crochet hooks were rug hooks.  Some of the rugs were crocheted.

DORA:  I'm thinking of these ornate hooks that I've seen in the Encyclopedia of Crochet.

NANCY:  Those are small hooks.  Parts of them were hand carved.  The fanciest bone and ivory hooks, the handles were lathe turned, then they'd cut the hook part, becuase they couldn't cut the hook on a lathe, since it's not symmetrical. Most of those hooks were lathe turned.  The fanciest ones with the captured balls inside them, those are hand carved.

DORA: How do you go about collecting?

NANCY:  Ebay helped a lot.  Before that I went around to antique sales and flea markets and picked up a few here and there, but my collection didn't blossom until ebay.  Part of it is I live in Northern California, and nothing here is older than 1950.  This was orchard.  There are not yard sales with old stuff in them.

DORA:  Were the sources from all over on ebay?

NANCY:  Most of the hooks were made in England, particularly the older ones.  Some of the more modern steel hooks were made in the U.S. by American companies.  I have two hooks that I think were made in India, probably for British women who lived there.  Anywhere there was British colonialism, you'd find crochet hooks.  I have a few from Australia and a few from France and Germany, but mostly they came out of England.

DORA:  You must have learned a whole lot about the history of crochet from your collecting.

NANCY:  I never thought I was interested in history, but the history of needlework just fascinates me. It's often tied in with the politics, which you wouldn't think..  Let me digress a minute.  In the button book there was this one style of crochet buttons that were kind of small, and they used a lot of slip stitches.  I could date them from garments and research in Harpers Bazaar, from 1830 through 1870 or so.  And then there wasn't hardly anything about crochet buttons until 1890 again.  The style had completely changed, they were bigger and had different stitches in them.  Paris was the center of the fashion industry back then, just as it is today.  I'm thinking, what happened that made those buttons disappear for ten years..  Then I realized, it was the Franco-Prussian War, on the doorstep of Paris, duh!

DORA:  Very interesting.

NANCY: There's another instance in the button book, in Dorsetshire County, in the south of England there was a huge cottage industry of button making up until the 1860s.  Then in  1861, at the Crystal Palace Exposition sponsored by Queen Victoria and Prince Phillip,  a machine for making a fabric-covered wire ring button was introduced.  These hand-made buttons from Dorsetshire were made of thread wrapped around a ring, and they were the cheap everyday  button that went on underwear and children's clothing, that kind of stuff.  Well, because of this new button machine which could make a thousand times more buttons per hour, these people were completely thrown out of work.  The British government took these people and actually physically against their will moved them to Australia, which was a penal colony at the time.  So you get all this politics involved with it.

DORA:  They moved them there, why?

NANCY: To keep them from starving to death -- that was the British government's plan to keep them from starving to death.

DORA:  Oh my God!  So what about crochet history? There seem so many unanswered questions.

NANCY:  I do a lot of research, but because it was a woman's craft, there's almost nothing written about it.  There was practically nothing written before the 1880s, because before that no women were taught to read.

DORA:  The Lis Paludan book, she talks about Penelope, the very early magazine that goes back to 1820s

NANCY:  That was a Dutch publication and I think women were taught to read earlier there then other places.

DORA:  She says she couldn't find any examples of crochet from earlier than about 1820s.   But then by the time you get to the 1840s, there are these samplers with hundreds of stitch patterns.  To me that just doesn't add up -- all these stitch patterns were invented in only twenty years?

NANCY:  OK, the other thing that happened in the 1840s was the Industrial Revolution.  Suddenly there was the development of a middle class that had some free money and could read.  Some of them didn't have to work or had some free time.  The other thing that happened along with the Industrial Revolution, was you had cheap cotton thread.   Before that all thread was hand made.  You could make thread by machine in the springtime, when there was water to turn water wheels.  Before the steam engine, you relied on water power for anything where power was needed.  That cut your work year to between four and six months of the year.  The Industrial Revolution had a lot to do with it.  Can you tell you've got me on topic now?

DORA:  I'm loving it, please keep going.

NANCY:  Because of the development of the middle class you had a lot of people who wanted to travel. Companies like DMC sent women out into all parts of  Europe to collect all the local needlework crafts, brought them back and published them.  You suddenly had books on Hardanger and all sorts of ethnic needlework.  Crochet became very popular very fast because it was something you could pick up and put down, and because it went quickly.  If you wanted to make lace before crochet you had to make needle lace or bobbin lace.  You can get similar patterns in all three -- crochet, bobbin or needle lace, like the eye of god or the spider's web.  If I do a piece in crochet it takes me an hour.  In bobbin lace it'll take about ten hours, and in needle lace it'll take fifteen hours, for the same amount of lace.

DORA:  So you think all those many crochet stitch patterns was a sudden explosion?

NANCY:  Yes, because of the developing middle class and the availability of the thread and the availability of the tools, all because of the Industrial Revolution.

DORA:  Madame Riego, she claims to have invented crochet.

NANCY:  I see no reason not to believe her.  Someone had to invent it.

DORA:  And Dilmont?

NANCY: She worked for DMC.  Madame Riego's books were in her own name.  She was in England and taught needlework to Queen Victoria's daughters. She worked at least part time as an employee of the Queen.

DORA:  Your knowledge is amazing! How do you go about doing research?  I've been looking for sources but haven't found much.

NANCY: For some of the crochet hooks I actually contacted the Forge Mill museum,   in Reddich England, where most of the needles were made.  They had old catalogues from way to to the 1800s, so I could really see what was being done.

DORA:  Why aren't you writing a big tome on crochet history?

NANCY:  So far I haven't  found a publisher.  When I did the button book, I had to decide whether to self-publish or use a publisher, but at the time I didn't want to have to do marketing and distribution, page layout, all that.  I wanted to be able to concentrate on the writing. The problem with a book on crochet hooks is finding the publisher.

DORA:  Well, I'm thinking not only of hooks, but the whole topic of crochet history.  We desperately need a book other than Lis Paludan's!

NANCY:  It's something I might do if I could find a publisher who is interested.

DORA: You don't think they would be?

NANCY:  Lis Paludan had the advantage of all those European museums she could get access to.  There are no collections like that in the US. Even there, very few people appreciate crochet even today.  Most of what she looked at was church archives, vestments and overcloths and things like that,  which would be saved and taken care of.  If you're talking about crochet hooks, no museums have them.  Very few of them have included crochet in their collections, because it's still a relatively new lace, and it tends to be chunky compared to the others.  If you look at the old bobbin and needle laces, even the sewing thread we use today would be big, Nothing in crochet even approaches that. Even the oldest Irish lace is made in larger thread than that.

DORA:  So it doesn't look as beautiful to them.

NANCY:  Right.

DORA:  Have you found any really old American crochet?  There was that beautiful needlework book by the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder - with beautiful crocheted rugs, have you seen any of that?

NANCY:  Some of the pieces done by Laura Ingalls, you can see the original pieces in the museum in Missouri.  There are problems even with the 1880s in the US.  One, there aren't many people here.  Because people were migrating, very little stuff got kept.  Once you've migrated and you start living in a new place, it's quite a while till you have time to make lace.

DORA:  I go shopping at a flea market right across the street from me, and one of the vendors has crochet, which I go through.  Some of the stuff I've got there, for like $5, is quite amazing.  Sometimes it looks like really tiny thread.  I wish I could date them like you do.

NANCY:  Anything you find in the U.S. you'll be able to find a pattern in a book somewhere.  There were almost no designers in the United States.  When I did the Lacy Knitting of Mary Schiffman, one thing she told me was, you might be able to make up an edging and do it yourself, but doiles, because of their complexity, are always done with a pattern.  The same  for crochet, I'm certain.

DORA:  Do you collect the old pattern books?

NANCY:  I do. My collection of old pattern books rivals the Library Company of Philadelphia.

DORA:  I saw you had written on their website.

NANCY:  That library in particular specializes in books on women's subjects, so they have one of the best collections of American pattern books and things like that.

DORA:  So that's the place to go if you want to do research.

NANCY:  You probably know that Benjamin Franklin started the public library system.  Before that people would pool their money and go to England to buy books, it was a subscription system. The Library company started out as a subscription library of which Benjamin Franklin was one of the founders.

DORA:  That's cool!

NANCY:  The oldest books I have are from the 1850s, more from the 60s and 70s.

DORA:  I have some from the 1960s and 70s.

NANCY:  I measure those in feet!

DORA:  It seems to me there was big tradition of crochet in North Africa.

NANCY: There was, and the same for Germany, but since I don't know the language it's hard for me do the research.

DORA:  I just met a man from Jordan who owns  Dark Horse Yarns, he was telling me in his country there's a tradition that an expectant mother makes hundreds of little crochet bags.  She'll give them as gifts to all the people who come to see the new baby, and these bags are like commemorations of the birth.  That' s so Martha Stewart, isn't it, we need to start that tradition here!

NANCY:  Right!

DORA:  I guess I'm resisting the idea that crochet is not an older form.  I have a feeling that some form of crochet is much older than that.

NANCY:  I don't believe that. In fact, I just proposed an article that is fairly technical in nature, it looks at the structure of what I call these single thread laces -- needle lace, tatting, knitting, crochet. Of all of those, crochet is the most complex technically, which implies it probably would have been the last to be developed.

DORA:  That is interesting.  Well, if you have any trouble getting it published, I'd be thrilled to have it in Crochet Insider!  I know there's a big hunger, people are dying to know more, and you seem to have a lot of knowledge.  I'd buy the book for sure!

NANCY:  If you publish a book in the United States, the problem is the publisher wants to sell 10,00 copies in the first year.  I don't think the market in crochet is there, particularly for something that's technical.  If you're doing an afghan book you'll make it, but not something  technical. I don't think there are that many people interested.  I'm actually thinking of a British publisher.

DORA:  That's an idea.

NANCY:  They will consider a book if only three to five thousand copies are going to sell in the first year.

DORA:  Are you seeing any significant shifts  now in crochet?

NANCY:  Not really.  The majority of people out there doing crochet are still doing afghans.  Most of the patterns are afghans and and the yarns are afghan yarn.  Garments in crochet were very popular in the fifties.   In spite of us in CGOA who do a lot of garments. there really are not a lot of people doing them.

DORA:  Yet I'm one of a whole group of newer designers doing garment books, so who is buying them?

NANCY:  The garments of the fifties  were made of nothing larger than size 3 thread, or baby weight yarn. Today people are trying to make garments out of chunky worsted weight yarn.  It doesn't translate  -- it's not highly appealing crochet. Generally, it stands on its own and doesn't drape well.

DORA:  I think there are a few people who have gotten past that and have beautiful books out.

NANCY:  If they're using chunky yarns, the patterns become dated very quickly. I think you need classic patterns in  yarn or in thread for it to have any sort of shelf life.  Most of these books are here this year and if they're still on the shelf in a year from now it's a wonder.  And it's OK with the publishers.

DORA:  The publishers think it's a two year shelf life and they want the person to make another book.

NANCY:  But you're not going to get a lot of people buying those books if they only want to make one pattern in it.  By the time they buy the yarn and make it up, and are ready to buy the yarn for the second one, the stuff is starting to look dated already.  The other thing I find --  in September I'm teaching at the Embroiderers Guild of America National Convention, it's their fiftieth anniversary.  When I go there and teach, just the kit fees, not including the classes, can often run $150.  The people there don't think twice about paying that amount of money for a kit. But I find people who do crochet work are almost always on a restricted budget. In that respect it's still a craft and not an art.  At the Embroiderers Guild, no one there is doing it as a craft, they're all doing it as an art.  When you have people making a baby blanket for every baby who comes along, they're still treating crochet  as a craft, and are not willing to spend more bucks on it.

DORA:  Right.  I guess I'm feeling a little more optimistic because at the recent TNNA I went to, the yarn companies were more interested in crochet patterns and crochet designers. And the yarns are getting thinner.  But it needs industry cooperation.  I'd love to design these beautiful things you're talking about, but not  if I can't find anyone to pay me to design it. .

NANCY:  Well, the end consumer doesn''t want to make anything that takes them weeks to do.

DORA:  Knitters do that.  I'm hoping, maybe I'm wrong, that it's changing for crochet.  There are some knitters who are crossing over.  And that large group of crocheters you're describing, I don't think they are everybody.

NANCY:  You're right.  When I first started teaching crochet, that's all there was.  But more and more people are moving in that direction. The problem is the yarn manufactures, the designers and the customer all have to move together.  If the yarn company makes a really fine yarn, and the consumer still wants things to be really fast, they're not going to buy that yarn.  Everyone has to move together.  I think the knitters did this about twenty years ago.  The crocheters  are just on the beginning edge of it.

DORA:  I believe that. People are not stopping doing crochet, they are loving it.  And the really creative people out there now are pushing for that.

NANC: All the crocheters who are doing that, you probably know every on of them. But there are many more crocheters out there who you don't know.

DORA:  I realize that.  But I'm thinking of people like Doris Chan, the big mark she's made, she's doing something very special and unique, and that was only one technique. I basically agree with you, but I just hope it doesn't take too long because I'm not young and I want to be around when it happens.

NANCY:  It could be a long haul yet.  With this recession that's either here or coming up, there might be people picking up knit and crochet again.  At the moment they're so worried about whether they can keep their house or not, they haven't gotten to the point of thinking whether they can spend even a small amount on yarn.  There are yarn stores that are shutting down again, and on the other hand I see a few new ones here are opening up.  Four or five years ago there were a lot of new yarn stores and it'll be interesting to see if they make it through this.

DORA:  I have one more subject I wanted to bring up, as long as you don't mind continuing at this point.

NANCY:  I'm fine.

DORA:  It has to do with the whole issue of sizing, and I know you're a sizing person.  I know you've done a lot to teach people how to do large sizes.  I wonder what is your opinion of the CYCA standards.

NANCY:  For women's garments, they're going to have to be done in 2 inch bust increments. When you're talking about regular women's sizes, you're talking about the size of the bones, physically, how big the bones are.  As bones grow larger, they do so proportionally. When you start going into large sizes, the bones are no longer getting bigger, you're talking about fat, and that can go on anywhere.  It's a different proportion.  I just find it unbelievable that people think they can grade a pattern from a 32 inch bust to a 60 inch bust.

DORA:  That's what the publishers are asking us to do.

NANCY:  They are clueless. They need to come and take my class.  You'd be surprised how many of those editors I get in my classes.

DORA:  Oh good.  Please preach that gospel to them.  They think they're responding to their customers.

NANCY:  They're trying very hard.

DORA:  But it's impossible.  I'd design a totally different garment for a larger person.  But they don't want to pay me twice, so they want the garment I made for a petite to be sized up. I design to fit myself, since I'm a small, but I don't expect it to look great on a different shaped woman.

NANCY:  And you can wear a different garment, like a dropped shoulder.  I can wear a dropped shoulder too, but if you're any larger than me, you won't touch a dropped shoulder, just because so much fabric bulks up under their arm.  This is not just a problem with crochet.  It's always been a problem in women's clothing.  Men can buy their shirts by neck size  and arm length.  Women can't do that.  Men can buy their pants by waist size and inseam length.  Women can't do that.  Right now, the garments you see in stores available commercially are expected to fit 12% of the population.  That's it!  All those standard sizes you see, like in a women's range or a junior range, that's all they're expected to cover.

DORA:  That's amazing!  What happens to everyone else?  They're wearing ill-fitting clothes.

NANCY:  Exactly.  Unless women have their clothes custom made, it's always been a problem for women's clothing.

DORA:  The stretchy fabrics they use now, I guess that covers a lot -- or it reveals a lot.

NANCY:  That's true, but if your clothes were cut to fit your body, they would be much more comfortable.

DORA:  Yes, we need to bring back tailoring.

NANCY: Not only would they be more comfortable, but they would make you look thinner. You wouldn't have these drop sleeves that make your shoulders look 6 inches wider.  That shoulder seam would be up where that little knob on your shoulder is, instead out another 3 inches.

DORA:  Are you spending most of your time these days teaching, or a variety of things?

NANCY: I do a variety of things.  Right now I spend about half my time doing stock photography.  That's mostly nature photography.

DORA:  How interesting -- I didn't know you do that.

NANCY:  The other half I spend on needlework. It can be writing, designing or teaching, and I probably spend a third of my time on each.  It comes in bulk, I write for 6 months, then teach for 2 months, then design for 4 months.

DORA:  Are you designing in all genres of needlework?

NANCY:  Embroidery I mostly teach, a lot of guild teaching.  I don't do much design in embroidery.  I do a little writing in embroidery for Piecework and things like that. I used to do a lot of writing in sewing, I wrote many articles for Thread magazine, but  they changed their focus, all the editors I worked with left, so I don't do any sewing stuff right now.

DORA:  That's too bad.

NANCY:  I may get back to it, you never know. I do more designing in crochet.

DORA:  Are you working with any particular publishers?

NANCY:  DRG has eighty or eighty-five percent of the market, so obviously you're going to do most of your work for DRG.   I do some work for yarn companies, I work with Coats and Clark, DMC, all the standard ones.  Most of my focus lately has been on these 15-page booklets.  I can make more money on those.  They go faster than a big book.  I figure I make as much or money on those when it comes down to how much you actually make at the end of the year.  I do individual designs that get published in magazines or by yarn labels -- that's fill in work i do around everything else.

DORA:  Are you working on another book?

NANCY:  Not right now.  I have a couple of proposals out and I expect one of those to get accepted, so I will be working on a book, one of those 15-page ones.  A book on crochet hooks is close to the top of of my priority list, but it's been there for quite a while now.  It's a matter of seeing if I can find a publisher.  Or if I'm going to bite the bullet and do it myself.  Do it for the love, not for the money.

DORA:  Myra Wood knows everything there is to know about self-publishing.  She is wonderful, I'll send you a link.  Her book is doing well, she might make back her money.

NANCY:  If you can't find a publisher for it, you have to stop and think, is there really not enough interest out there.

DORA:  Well, I know in Myra's case, it was about wanting to do it her own way.  There's something to be said for that.  I don't think the publishers really know what's going to sell.

NANCY:  They're making an educated guess.

DORA:  As I talk to more publishers, it seems pretty whimsical -- I like this, so let's do a book on it.  As opposed to getting out there and doing market studies.

NANCY: Some of them do market studies.  I know Taunton Press used to do a lot of market studies. Market research tells you where people are now, not where they're going to be when the book comes out.

DORA:  Will we be able to have some photos of your stuff to go with this article?

NANCY:  Most of my stuff is going into a book called Masters of Crochet, so most of my best stuff is with Crochet Partners right now.  An Irish crochet doll dress, my favorite doily, it was in Crochet World a couple of years ago.  You know those cornucopia filet doilies with all fruits and vegetables.  I did one that was a squash plant and squash blossoms -- it looked like a squash hill. They're featuring my crochet tassels.

DORA:  It's so great they're putting out that book.

NANCY:  It was an honor to be asked.

DORA:  But you're one of the top people!

NANCY:  I don't think of myself like that.  I probably have been doing it longer than most of you.

DORA:  There's got to be something to show for it, right?

NANCY:  If I didn't have anything to show for it, I should give it up!

DORA:  But you do. Nancy, you have been so generous and I have been fascinated by every word.  What a fountain of knowledge!  Thank you so much.

NANCY:  Just let me know if you have any questions.