Book-centric

Needless to say, I have been a bit book obsessed lately.

I am half-way through writing my book proposal and coming up with all the designs. (Which I am so excited about! Each design is a little baby of mine. I tend to want to obsess over every detail of very project, but that just makes me dizzy with plans dancing in my head. So I have to literally stop myself, and say "this is only schematic, there will be time for that later, little girl".) Now I'm on the age old question. Why would a crocheter buy your book? That's a bit hard to answer right, without sounding a bit lame and ego-centric? "Because they want to be nice to me", doesn't sound real compelling.

So I dived into my collection and the collection at the library to see if I they could inspire me, and realized one huge problem of mine. I love books. I totally let myself get lost in their uniqueness and totally forgot why I was doing research in the first place.

I started by raiding the UC DAAP library. (The hubbie is a grad student there and they have a great selection of fashion journals. I might have to keep him in school to get to use the library more. JK honey!)

I found some really neat ideas in some of the books. Granted the books were old and the styles out-dated, but I don't care about that. That gives me a chuckle and I dive in more.

Here are some of my favorites over the past few days:

Shanie Jacobs- Super inspiring designs. She learned to crochet on a commune and applied really neat techniques to clothes that were in fashion at the time. So ok, I would never crochet a leotard like she did. But her idea of the Victorian shirt (left in photo) could totally be valid today.

New Design in Crochet- this one first makes me chuckle, then think "yeah we could do that, if we..."



The Mask- I love, I don't know why- but he makes me chuckle-




The sculptures- we could definitely tweak, and I can see them being very contemporary and maybe even functional.



Luckily, after a very long detour. I did find some inspiration to help me answer my question. I see it as a two parter. The one side I know right away- and its a big secret- really its the whole concept of the book. But the other is my design aesthetics (my fashion and design sense) and that's a lot harder to explain why people would like it (b.c frankly I have no idea if people like my designs). You know? Any ideas for me?