A self-proclaimed crafty gRRRL, Vickie Howell has been involved in the creative arts for as long as she can remember.

Before becoming the mother of two boys, she worked in the entertainment industry at companies including International Creative Management (ICM) and Alliance Atlantis Entertainment.

Post motherhood, she’s acted as owner, designer, web-mistress and CEO of three craft-based businesses. Mamarama, founded in 2001, offered cool hand-made garb for hip moms and their kids. In 2003, after relocating to Austin, Texas, Vickie co-founded Ruby Goes Retro (RgR) with her sister-in-law. RgR furnished hipsters worldwide with authentic, embellished and inspired by vintage clothing and accessories. In 2005 she founded VickieHowell.com under her company Vickie Howell, Inc., as a homebase for her many crafty endeavors. Networking for her businesses lead her to nine other crafty entrepreneurs and, together, they co-founded Austin Craft Mafia (ACM), an organization whose sole purpose is to promote and support independent, female-run, craft based businesses.

In efforts to do her part in the mobilization of the feminist-based knitting movement, she founded successful chapters of the irreverent but socially conscious knitting group Stitch n’ Bitch, in Los Angeles, CA and Austin, TX. Vickie’s on a personal quest to assist in breaking the negative social stigma that knitting and crafting have attached to them by bringing more recognition to the hip, creative and edgy sides of these forms of expression.

Currently, Vickie can be seen on the DIY Do-it-Yourself Network as the host of the successful knitting series, Knitty Gritty, which is currently airing all 8 seasons; and on the new Lifetime Television web series, Crafted. Her DIY Network 1-hour special, Knitty Gritty Knitsters, airs in July 2008. In 2006, she and her ACM partners debuted Stylelicious, another series for DIY that focuses on edgy, hand-made fashion.

Vickie, her projects, and her businesses have been featured in such mediums as: The Today Show; USA Today; Tease!: 50 T-shirt Projects from Superstars of Art, Crafts & Design; E! Network's Singled Out; BBC Radio Scotland; TV Guide; Interweave Knits Magazine; Knitty.com; BUST Magazine; DIY Jewelry Making; Weekend Entertaining, Real Simple Magazine; and “Celebrity Scarves II” book. She also writes a regular celebrity column for Vogue Knitting’s Knit.1 Magazine, an Eco-Craft column in the healthy parenting magazine, KIWI, and is the Knitting Editor for CraftGossip.com. In October 2005 her first book, New Knits on the Block: A Guide to Knitting What Your Kids Really Want, hit shelves and was nominated for a Craft Trends Magazine Award of Excellence. In June 2006 came her second book, Not Another Teen Knitting Book, followed by her 3rd book, Knit Aid: A How-to Helper for the Knitter on the Go, which debuted in May 2008. Coming from Vickie in 2009 and 2010, are three more books: Pop Goes Crochet, Eco-Stitch (co-written with Adrienne Armstrong), and Craft Corps.

Check out Vickie’s luxurious, environmentally conscious yarn, the Vickie Howell Collection from Southwest Trading Company--in stores worldwide now!