11 - 18 September 2027 | Canada & New England
Instructors
Meet your host
Hello, I'm Louise
Founder of Handy Little Me
Hello there! I’m Louise Bollanos, the knitting and crochet designer behind Handy Little Me, and I’ve always had a deep love for creativity. sitting down with a notebook, a coffee, and my yarn stash to plan and design my next pattern.
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Sharing a Passion for All Things Yarn
My website is a place where I share knitting and crochet patterns, tutorials, and plenty of yarn-filled inspiration. I’m passionate about creating resources that feel approachable, useful, and inspiring for makers at every stage. Alongside patterns and tutorials, I share tips, creative ideas, and roundups of beautiful projects. You’ll also find a behind-the-scenes look at my work as a full-time knitting and crochet designer.
Michele Lee Bernstein
Michele Lee Bernstein, PDXKnitterati, designs and teaches from her home base in Portland, Oregon. She loves designing accessories, especially if they use one or two skeins of very special yarn. She’s fond of texture (brioche, lace, entrelac, elongated stitches, assigned pooling), and loves using interesting techniques to make small objects sing. Her patterns are available through Ravelry and Payhip.
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Michele loves teaching knitters to be the boss of their knitting! She teaches at fiber festivals (Vogue Knitting Live, Red Alder Fiber Arts Festival, Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival), guild meetings, retreats, and local yarn shops. Her new book, Brioche Knit Love: 21 Skill Building Projects from Simple to Sublime combines her love for teaching and designing, using simple accessories to take knitters from the easiest one color brioche through more complex brioche techniques.
Melissa Leapman
With over 1300 designs in print, Melissa Leapman is one of the most widely-published American crochet and knit designers at work today.
As a freelance designer, she’s worked with leading ready-to-wear design houses in New York City. Also, top yarn companies commission Melissa to create designs promoting their new and existing yarns each season; her popular patterns and name recognition help them sell yarn.
Leapman is the author of several bestselling knit and crochet books, including Cables Untangled, Mastering Color Knitting, and Knitting the Perfect Fit (all published by Random House). She is the author of The Knit Stitch Pattern Handbook (Random House/Potter Craft, 2013), a comprehensive knitting stitch dictionary, includes favorite patterns gathered over her more than 25 years in the industry. It’s the go to book for professionals and lay persons alike.
