Are you ready for week 13 of the Friends Around the World 3 CAL?  This week we’re headed to Israel with Iris Fait.  Her “Yona” square is named in honor of her mother who taught her to crochet. Yona is her mother’s name which means dove in Hebrew.  But before we go there, I’m going to take you on a quick detour to Canada.

Why Canada?

Remember how we told you a few weeks ago that we weren’t going to be able to bring you videos for the rest of the Friends Around the World CAL?  Well, we have great news!  Tania Leis has agreed to create videos for the remaining weekly squares.  Woo hoo!  We are so excited!!!

Tania is from a small village in Southwestern Ontario, Canada where she lives with her husband and three children.  She is a piano teacher as well as the interim Choir director/organist at a local church.  Tania also owns  a small yarn shop which is in the front room of her house.  She tells us it’s so small that many of you likely have a bigger stash/craft room!!  Tania also hosts a weekly Crochet and Chat group and teaches a Kids Crochet class.

Making the weekly videos takes a tremendous amount of time and we are incredibly grateful to Tania for picking up the ball!

And now we’re off to the other side of the world to visit with Iris in Israel.

Iris is married and a mother to two sons.  Her work day is spent as lecturer in management at the University. But at night….

When she was a girl she asked her mother to teach her to “knit”.  She learned the basic stitches of crochet, made a scarf but then didn’t pick up her hook again for a long time.

In 2014 when working on a rug for her son, she quickly realized that her knowledge of crochet was not quite enough.  That led her to visit her neighbor, Sarit.  Sarit has a small studio and a yarn shop in and offered a basic course in crochet.  In no time she had two new crochet friends (Sarit and Sharon) and big new love!

These days, Iris works as a tester for various designers and leads the Israeli translation team for us along with Sarit Greenberg and Sharon Nevo.  Her responsibilities as a translator include reviewing the translation groups, sorting files and coordinating the final files for formatting and making of  PDFs. She works closely with our translation admin, Massiel Lago.

When she’s not crocheting, Iris is out in the garden and also enjoys traveling.  Here are a few photos she shared with us.  So pretty!!!

Iris has also dabbled in experimenting with her own designs so when we asked her to design a square for “Friends”, she was thrilled to give it a go!  Her square, Yona, is absolutely gorgeous!  We’re all looking forward to seeing a lot more designs from Iris!

You can find the pattern here:  Yona/Ravelry/Iris Fait

You can find the video here:  Yona/YouTube/Tania Leis

EXTRA STUFF

Yarn Requirements

Check out our post on yarn requirements here.  Here’s what the testers used for this square:

Lynette:  Worsted/Aran, 127 grams

Marjolein:  Stylecraft Special DK, 47 grams

Silvana:  Herrschners Worsted 8, 97.1 grams

Aprille:  Stylecraft Aran, 85 grams

Micki: Worsted, 98 grams

Pattern Location: Yona/Ravelry/Iris Fait

Video: Yona/YouTube/Tania Leis

Important Additional Pattern Info

Don’t forget you will need to add an extra three rounds to your square to achieve the final 48 st/side count which is necessary for joining. You can find the instructions for all squares here. Translations for these additional rounds can be found here.    The extra rounds will vary slightly from week to week because the squares vary in ending stitch counts so be sure to follow the directions for each square.

You can unpack your bags for a bit as we’re staying in Israel until next week…see you then!