When I woke up this morning in Asheville, North Carolina, I was a woman with a mission — well, two missions.

One was to get home, and the other was to stop along the way and meet up with Vickie, one of the friends I have made through Ravelry –a  woman I think of as one of my Ravelry peeps.

I first became acquainted with Vickie as a result of a comment posted on a Ravelry forum, and through the course of our conversations, we learned, among other things, that we lived only about 75 minutes apart from each other.

Last September I missed the opportunity to meet her when the CGOA Chainlink conference was held in Greensboro, North Carolina, where she lives. While she was bumping elbows with Lily Chin and getting her photo taken with the Crochet Dude, I was, most likely, standing in line waiting with a huge orange suitcase waiting my turn to show my designs to the good people at Coats & Clark.

Today, after a couple of years exchanging telephone calls, text messages, and private messages at Ravelry, we finally got to meet.

Vickie brought some of her work with her, and I was able to get some photos of her work to share.

One of her crochet interests is making all manner of “grannies.” Using the 3dc clusters that are the hallmark of any granny design, Vickie has generously made any number of granny projects for the newborn children of the people in her life.

Here is one example of a sweater she makes using the granny design as its base:

and here is another:

Vickie does not limit herself to sweaters, and has become known for her standard baby blanket, a 28 round granny square where she changes color every four rounds and works one chain between each 3dc cluster, except the corners where she works 3 double crochets, two chains, followed by three more double crochet stitches.

As you can see, this crochet “recipe” gets her a good effect if she is using just two colors:

or a rainbow of them:

While the second blanket does not exactly follow her formula (there were some limits imposed by the lack of availability of some of the yarn colors), it is still a visual treasure.

Vickie, as she put it, “likes to keep her travels simple,” and by exploring the potential of the humble granny aesthetic, she has found a lovely way to express herself and with those around her.