As a child, Terri Dauback Marolf sat in class and practiced knitting using pencils under the desk while the teacher was talking. At age 13, her Aunt Sally taught her how to crochet, which she’s preferred ever since.

Now, she’s completed over 400 crochet projects during the course of her life.

“It’s very relaxing, I feel like I can’t go a day without it,” she said.

Now, Dauback Marolf is working on four different projects at once, and donates many of her items to schools, hospitals and rescue missions. But she doesn’t play favorites when it comes to her projects.

“I put love into every stitch,” she said.

Along with 115 other yarn fiends, Dauback Marolf shares progress pictures of her work, tidbits of advice and funny crochet memes in a Facebook group she founded called Central NY/Syracuse Crochet/Knit Group.

The group came to life this past spring after Dauback Marolf asked on Facebook if anyone else in the Syracuse area was into crocheting or knitting. Shortly after, she received a message from Chris Bailey encouraging her to create the Facebook group, which has grown ever since.

Dauback Marolf grew up in central New York. She lived in Syracuse for a brief period, but has recently moved back to Rome to be with family.

“I’m going to miss the people that I have become friends with in this group, but I will still be in contact with them,” she said. “I feel I grow with everyone I speak to in there.”

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From a distance, looking at Chris Bailey’s crocheted blankets, it’s hard to believe that her yarn work isn’t a photograph.

Bailey likes doing portrait work, where she uses a pattern to crochet a larger-than-life sized scaling of a photo. One of those portraits was a gift for her pastor, depicting him and his family. She also made a sepia-toned blanket of her with her daughters.

Bailey has lived in Syracuse for 36 years and works the front desk in the sleep ward at Upstate University Hospital. This year, she’s gearing up for “Crochet Christmas,” using her expansive collection of yarn she keeps in a bedroom-turned-craft-room, “Yarntopia,” to make gifts for her loved ones.

Jacob Greenfeld | Asst. Photo Editor

Yarntopia was once the bedroom of her 26-year-old daughter who now lives in the basement. Bailey also has an older daughter who’s married with kids, but for the most part, she’s home alone with her bichon-chihuahua mix dog, Roxy.

“I just wish she had thumbs, you know, so she could be more helpful,” she said with a laugh. “And hold conversation.”

Conversation is exactly what Bailey was looking for when she joined Dauback Marolf in their crocheting and knitting group. They connected through a shared love of crafting and a mutual desire for local friendship.

Bailey has joined several similar Facebook groups, but they can be difficult to find. She is part of a group at her church, which she loves, but meetings happen Friday mornings during work hours.

Without direct information readily available about area crochet groups, Bailey needed to fill a hole. So, she suggested to Dauback Marolf that they create their own group.

Since spring 2016, the pair has attempting to coordinate meetups in public spaces around Syracuse. Attendees would bring their work in progress and sit for an hour or two, chatting about life while stitching away.

But it’s been hard to coordinate. Everyone has busy lives and families, and for some it’s hard to get a spare moment to come to a meetup. Bailey hopes to pick up interest again and has since scheduled a meetup for Dec. 8 at the North Syracuse Public Library at 6 p.m.

Besides Dauback Marolf and Bailey, only one other central New York crocheter has made it out to a meeting.

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Sheley Siegfried remembers watching her mother knit and crochet. Crocheting came easy to her, but when she tried to learn to knit as a 3-year-old, she got so frustrated that she threw her needles at the wall.

At age 19 Siegfried started taking crochet seriously — making Christmas presents for her friends and family. She didn’t have much money to go out and buy presents, so making them was her way of not letting her family down.

When she was pregnant with her now two-year-old son, she turned to YouTube to expand her knowledge of crochet.

“Turns out that it wasn’t as simple as the videos portrayed because I think three out of the ten hats I made actually fit our relatives,” she said. “You live and learn, right?”

She did learn. In fact, she learned an entirely new stitch to complete a bald eagle blanket with the star spangled banner in the background as a father’s day present for her boyfriend.

Since she’s gotten better at crochet, Siegfried has started her own online business at timelessstrings.com. With the slogan “homemade is better than store bulk,” she has hats, scarves, blankets and specialty items like a mermaid blanket, a unicorn stuffed animal, and toddler-size overalls.

She said the activity has been somewhat therapeutic for her. Siegfried has anxiety, and crafting helps her decompress, especially after a bad day.

“I can get lost in my creation and don’t have to worry about seeing a doctor,” she said.

Siegfried loves attending the North Syracuse crochet meetups because she finds it nice to know that she’s not the only one with a “crazy obsession.”

Graphic Illustration by Lucy Naland

Online, the group has been an asset to Siegfried because group members are eager to help when she doesn’t understand the pattern she’s working off of, or if she needs inspiration on what to make in the first place.

On a personal level, she remarks how welcoming Dauback Marolf and Bailey have been.

“Chris is someone who you could talk to for hours about anything no matter if perspectives are the same or not,” she said. “Terri is such a sweet lady. She is fun to talk with and always seems to want to put a smile on your face.”

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Lisa Pearson’s 5-year-old daughter wishes she could keep all of her mother’s crochet work — she loves it all.

Pearson has also finished over 400 crochet projects. Earlier this year, Pearson and Dauback Marolf met up a few times. Dauback Marolf was collecting donations for a local children’s organization, and asked the central New York crochet group if anyone was interested in contributing.

“We ended up with 215 between her, myself and a couple others,” Pearson said. “Not too bad for a small group.”

Pearson lives in Verona, New York, 45 minutes away from the city and the north Syracuse meetups. While she can’t make it out to the meetings, she loves the support network the group gives her.

Recently, when she was working on a backpack purse, Pearson didn’t know whether she wanted the straps to lie at an angle or straight, so she posted a picture asked the group. They unanimously said angled.

Taught by her maternal grandmother when she was a young teenager, Pearson is now 48. She still has a crochet blanket her grandma made her when she was young.

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Debbie Mazzole’s mother taught her how to do the easiest stich in crochet, chain stitch, which is used at the beginning and end of projects.

“I had the chain I guess from one end of the house to the other, and I said ‘mom, I wanna make something bigger,’” she said.

Now, at age 39, she’s been crocheting “since forever,” but guidance from Chris Bailey really brought her out of her shell.

Bailey and Mazzole connected on Facebook, and Mazzole was really inspired by a photo Bailey posted of the blanket with her pastor and his family. Mazzole told Bailey she’d love to do portrait work but she was intimidated by it. Bailey encouraged her to go ahead and try it.

“So I bought a pattern that said ‘I love you to the moon and back,’ and I made that for my mom for Christmas, and I was like ‘oh, that was pretty easy,’” and then decided to jump into a bigger project.

Currently, Mazzole is working on a black and white “Abbey Road” blanket as a Christmas present for her Beatles-loving fiance and just finished a white tiger blanket.

“If you know how to single-crochet, anybody can do that type of work,” Mazzole encouraged.

Published on November 27, 2016 at 10:53 pm

Contact: cmrussel@syr.edu | @caseymrussell