Katie Kelsey

Belly, 2025
Cotton yarn, Daylily cordage
Crochet, rope-making

Adapted to crochet from a 1956 Fish and Wildlife Service leaflet for making a trawl net. After customizing the crochet pattern for each trawl net section, Katie was tasked with fabricating the “belly” section. She is a skilled and talented crochet artisan.

About Katie: Katie Kelsey grew up watching her grandmother crochet all sorts of things, but her grandmother is a lefty and couldn’t teach a righty. Later when Katie was 19, she learned to knit in trade for teaching a 12 year old to paddle a canoe. The youngster wove them across the lake as Katie knitted the world’s smallest hat. It was many years and hats later when the desire to create something faster and with more intricacy appeared. So back to her grandmother she went, but this time to search her books where Katie found a beginner how to crochet with lots of pictures.. That was the ticket. Since that fateful find Katie has made numerous baby hats, afghans, sweaters, ponchos, stuffed animals and goofy Halloween hats. As her grandmother’s eyesight started to fail, Katie has also worked through completing the many small projects that lived in her stash basket. She knits or crochets to weave a meditation and blessing for those that receive the items.