SOMETIMES, MAGIC can be found in the most unexpected places. Seattle artist Mandy Greer finds it from a soft tangle of yarns in every imaginable shade of blue; a jarful of pearly beads and buttons sparkling like tiny treasures; a piece of leather so ink-black you could get lost in it. From these pieces came a wandering river, a glowing moon, a watchful owl; the raw materials transformed, by simple tools, into something with a life of its own.

Greer's work resists easy categorization: It's fiber art but also encompasses performance art, photography, ceramics and other media. She uses not so much paints and brushes, but a sewing machine and crochet hook, weaving and twisting bits of fabric and yarn into magical forests, mythical creatures, fanciful garments, darkly disturbing images. Much of her art, particularly in recent years, is constructed primarily from simple chains of crocheting; that humble process many of us learned as children, of softly pushing a hook through a loop of yarn, over and over and over.

"Artists have appropriated craft as another language, but also as another form of expression, another tool in their hand, another material," says Stefano Catalani, director of curatorial affairs at Bellevue Arts Museum, which has exhibited Greer's work. "And by doing this, they have appropriated the whole baggage that comes with craft, the whole tradition."

A gentle-voiced woman who speaks about her work with quiet pleasure, Greer acknowledges that fiber art comes with baggage: that it is historically a female pursuit. But while she's fascinated by the tradition of women working with fiber, she's tweaking it for her own purposes. "As the mother of a son, I thought it was so ridiculous, saying blue is for boys," she says. "I started to think about fiber in the same way."

Greer's husband, Paul Margolis, also a fiber artist, taught her to crochet with a hook — he learned from his mother — and men are welcomed at the communal parties where many hands join to assist Greer in her work.

Her art is informed by mythology, fairy tales, literature, childbirth, motherhood and the magical way a chain of stitches can be transformed into whatever shape the imagination finds. It is often dazzlingly beautiful but never simply pretty; often it seems like something discovered fully formed in a forgotten corner, a citizen from some fantastical other world.

"Dare alla Luce," a solo exhibition at Bellevue Arts Museum in 2008, presented a forest of dangling vines in a green so bright it rivaled the installation's intricately beaded, bejeweled moon. Crystals of green — buttons and beads and flotsam merging like grains of sand into a clump — dangled like dewdrops; stars sparkled darkly in silver and black. It looked like a place you could get lost in, happily, in a dark yet inviting dream.

"Entering 'Dare alla Luce' was like entering into the Everglades Forest," remembers BAM's Catalani, curator of the work. "It was tropical, it was somehow muggy and wet . . . very much primordial, like going back to a time where life was young on the earth." The installation was later shown at Portland's Museum of Contemporary Craft, and an element of it — a black owl with cascading, lacy tail feather, gazing down from a multipronged, silver-encrusted star — is on display at Seattle's Roq La Rue Gallery.

Other works give us new glimpses into Greer's imagination. "The Slug Princess," made for the film "The Silvering Path," is a wearable piece in shades of sunbeam yellow that envelopes its wearer, from its elaborately festooned headpiece to the long, trailing tendrils that linger behind. "Honey and Lightning," a solo show at Roq La Rue earlier this year, featured a chamber of mirrors — the better to show off a vast chandelier seemingly made of golden cobwebs, like something you might find in a magical attic.

GREER NOT ONLY lives within a community — Seattle's Columbia City neighborhood, in a cozy hillside house with vivid green walls — she also involves it in her work. Years ago, Greer began inviting friends over to help her craft the multitudes of crocheted chains and pompoms she uses as raw materials. Then came a commission from Book-It Repertory Theatre in 2007, to create trailing red gowns to symbolize blood and violence for their production of "A Tale of Two Cities."

"There was no budget, and barely enough time to do anything," Greer remembers. A Book-It staffer suggested emailing the company's subscriber list to find ready helpers. "So all these people I didn't even know came over to my house," Greer says. "I loved seeing different people come together. Talking to a total stranger in a way that you feel comfortable — that's really the beginning of community."

This process later became the focus of "Mater Matrix Mother and Medium," a site-embedded installation that's been on display in several Northwest locations, Atlanta and New York. A seemingly endless river, crocheted from a rainbow of blues, the work was created through "crochet parties" involving strangers and newfound friends in a modern update of the traditional quilting bee. The river image, Greer says, fit perfectly, as communities have always gathered around water.

Greer's happy to teach the rudiments of crochet to beginners and doesn't mind in the slightest if the chain they produce isn't perfect; her work involves a variety of textures, and Greer says she's fascinated by "the ruggedness of the mistake" in imperfect handwork.

"I've made so many close friends through that process," she says, noting that the traditional artist's method of working alone in a studio is quite isolating. "It's the way I connect with the rest of the world."

This past summer, Greer completed a residency in The Project Room, a nonprofit multidisciplinary art center, beginning work on a project called "Solstenen," inspired by the A.S. Byatt short story "A Stone Woman," and by stone and ice itself; by ideas of weight and gravity translated into something physical. Greer isn't sure yet exactly what the project will be, though she's envisioning elaborate garments with embedded stones; she begins with simple mental images, then starts creating the crocheted strands that will become its bones and flesh.

Sitting in the spare Capitol Hill storefront, surrounded by mounds of yarn and fabric strands in a multitude of grays and silvers, she seems like a shopkeeper presenting her wares. People from the street would wander in during her residency, she remembers, asking what she was doing ("What do you sell here?" was a frequent query), or responding to the "crochet party" sandwich board on the sidewalk.

"Mandy embodies the theme of the first two years of The Project Room, which is the question, 'Why do we make things?" says Project Room founder Jess Van Nostrand. "Mandy is such a true maker, in the sense that her work is so physically laborious. At the same time, it addresses what it means to make something as an artist, but also how you make something as a community. She takes this word 'make,' and takes it out of the art world."

LIKE THE MEANDERING blue river of "Mater Matrix Mother and Medium," Greer wandered as a child; her father was in the Air Force, and she was born in Germany and grew up "all over." She learned to finger crochet as a child and did it "compulsively," finding calm in the repetitive movement, and loved to sew clothing for her dolls and stuffed animals. At 18, her career goal was to be a high-school English teacher, and she enrolled at the University of Georgia, majoring in English and ceramics.

"There was this duality of being," Greer says of her youth, fascinated by books and stories as well as by creating art; the two passions "grew up side-by-side." Her mother suggested that art could be a hobby, that reading could translate into a practical job. "I thought that was what would happen," Greer says, "and then it really switched." Art became her first love; reading fell back to the hobby, but continues to inform her work.

Greer made her way to Seattle and enrolled in the ceramics program at the University of Washington, earning an MFA in 1999. But she was, she says, tired of clay and its limitations. "Working in only one medium just didn't make any sense," she says, remembering her excitement as she discovered the work of multidisciplinary artists on the local and national scene. One day in the studio, she tried painting a ceramic form with latex, peeling it off, then stitching the resultant rubbery pieces together. Next came "pulling clothes out of my closet and taking them apart and sewing them around the forms," intoxicated by the immediacy of a process that didn't require machines and painting and glazing. She remembered her childhood love of sewing, and "it was a light-bulb moment" — an artist, finding her niche.

Back in town to teach in the department a few years after graduation, Greer met Margolis, and together they settled in the Seattle area. During that post-graduate-school time, Greer was developing her art, with solo shows at SOIL, 4Culture and Priceless Works galleries, but still dividing her time between her own work and various teaching jobs.

Then came the commission that "literally saved my life." Greer, pregnant with son Hazel in 2004, learned with little notice that her teaching job at Bellevue Arts Museum was over. "It was frightening. I was a little freaked out," she says. Some time earlier, she'd applied for a commission to create a permanent installation for the Faye G. Allen Children's Center at the new Central Library in downtown Seattle, through the Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs. "I really wanted to make some work about folk tales," she says, drawn to the idea of creating something for children. Worried about her family's financial future, she waited through the long selection process — and was chosen.

"That was the moment for me," she says of the first job that made her realize she could make a living as an artist. "It was the perfect thing to happen. We lived off it for three years."

If you visit the children's room at the library today, you'll see the three pieces Greer created for it, all floating serenely above the chaos of a roomful of schoolkids. "The Magic Grove," a branch of green boughs with sparkling pink flowers, seems to burst from the wall; inspired by the idea, Greer says, that the collection's many books about trees were growing. "Babe," the magical blue ox from the Paul Bunyan folk tales (and a nod to Northwest history), hangs like a trophy head, its horns a glittering wonderland of buttons and beads. "The Phoenix Fairy," a regal red bird with vivid, trailing tail feather, stands over the librarian's desk; a symbol, Greer says, of the library rising from the ashes (the Central Library has been built on its present site three times), and a totem for librarians, the repository of knowledge.

It was, Greer says, a wonderful time in her life as she created these works, at home with her infant son. "I was really getting to make something intensely beautiful because it was a job," she says, noting that for once she didn't have to worry about the cost of materials. "I didn't have to skimp on anything; I could really put anything I wanted into it."

Next came an offer to do a major installation at Bumbershoot, funded by One Reel and two separate grants Greer wrote. "I thought, oh my gosh, I just did it again!" she remembers, still thrilled by the idea that art could be a job. A few months after that came the offer for the Bellevue Arts Museum solo show, "Dare alla Luce." By now, a rhythm had become established. "There's always a couple of months' gap where I think, OK, what are we going to do? And then something else pops up, and they're big enough projects that they're grant-worthy."

LIFE AS A working artist, not to mention a working mother, is a continual scramble, but Greer and Margolis maintain a delicate balance between raising their child, making art and making ends meet. Margolis provides a steady income working as a Metro bus driver. Greer has an airy studio in their home (a recent remodel, with a wall crafted of patchwork-like glass panels), to better work while parenting. Though her days are chaotic and defy easy scheduling, "I don't feel right if I'm not down in here a little bit every day," she says of her work space, accessorized with two small, enthusiastic dogs. "This is my bubble."

At 38, having won multiple awards and grants, she's grateful to be able to continue creating — with work this year including commissions to adapt two existing headdresses (wonderfully whirled and braided creations, made from Greer's and her son's hair) for a Seattle Shakespeare Company production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream," a trip to New York to install "Mater Matrix Mother and Medium" as part of a multiartist exhibit at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine (Greer's New York debut), the "Honey and Lightning" show at Roq La Rue Gallery, and a permanent installation at Bow Lake Elementary School in SeaTac, through the Art in Public Places Program of the Washington State Arts Commission.

The latter, another cherished opportunity for Greer to create something for children, hangs in the school's atrium; four chandelier-like sculptures of birds and flowers, representing the four seasons. "We wanted something the kids could keep looking at and seeing something new all the time," says school principal Doug Neufeld. Delicately swaying high above the floor, the work reflects Greer's continued interest in folklore, in which birds are sometimes depicted as protectors of children and arbiters of knowledge. You look at the owl and it seems to be looking back, in a friendly, interested way.

"Solstenen," the shades-of-gray work born in The Project Room, still occupies Greer's time. She and Margolis plan to travel with it to Iceland next summer — photographing themselves in the massive garments with the dramatic landscape as a backdrop, and studying Icelandic mythology, history and fiber arts. Each strand, created by Greer herself or by visitors to The Project Room, will be woven into the art; as if it carries a multitude of hands across the sea.

"For me, crocheting is like drawing," says Greer, her fingers perpetually manipulating a hook and a twist of misty gray. "It's a line you can make go anywhere."

Moira Macdonald is a Seattle Times staff writer. Benjamin Benschneider is a Pacific Northwest magazine staff photographer.

This article was corrected on Monday, Dec. 5, 2011. An earlier version incorrectly stated that Bow Lake Elementary School is in Federal Way. It is actually in SeaTac, in the Highline School District.