I started to crochet a drinks coaster with some Stylecraft Craft Cotton, but then I thought I would make a small basket for Lam to put his loose change into because he leaves it in a mess on the kitchen shelves. I put a row of treble crochet into the side to give the basket a cute pot belly plus some relief from all the single crochet stitches, and then I finished off with some seed beads that caught my eye at the shop the other day.

I really am enjoying crocheting with this Style Cotton; although it’s not that great on the hands, it gives a lovely, neat stitch and I love the texture of the finished piece. I fancy a few more baskets, perhaps with the same yarn, but finished with some fabric at the top instead of beads. I think it would also be useful to have some with lids on, perhaps for the craft paraphernalia that inevitably ends up all over my desk…

Entry plonked in Crochet @ 8:10 pm
Tagged thusly: bead craft, Crochet, crochet basket, seed beads, stylecraft craft cotton

You won’t see me write a title like that very often!

I’m in the middle of crocheting a bag from, er, bags. The company that delivers my groceries insists on using polythene bags instead of boxes, so I want to get a lot of use out of them before I pass them back for recycling. The polythene I am crocheting with is thicker than the usual bags and it also has a crisper texture, so the project is looking good – reminiscent of a supple basket weave.

When it’s finished, I’m going to use the bag for all my shopping in town as a sort of silent, private protest against our Official Reusable Town Bag. Honestly, it’s a lot of nonsense. A local shop arranged for an apparently very well-known designer to come up with a a reusable bag for our town. The result, which costs £10, is eagerly being snapped up by the town’s Yummy Mummy crowd (so lots of trade for the enterprising shop, then), but what they apparently haven’t noticed is that the design and materials are very reminiscent of similar bags you could pick up on a market stall for £2 back in the 1980’s. Big pink and white script on a big black canvassy tote. Remember those? Sheesh. It was OK back then, but isn’t the idea of just putting a bunch of words all over a black bag just bad design? Meanwhile, the majority of the people buying them are using them as handbags so they are still picking up more polythene bags at the supermarket checkouts, and the designer is knocking out these bags for any town or city that asks for them. ! Grah!

Breathe now, must find calm. Yes, hold something handmade, that feels better.

I’ve run out of these polythene bags for the moment, so I can’t do much more with this right now. …I have, however, got loads of purple bags, so I might start another one off while I build up my supplies of orange and green. The grocery deliveryman saw my bag-in-progress and wanted to know how to make one, so I found myself standing at the front door, teaching him how to crochet! He confirmed that he could take my crocheted bag away for recycling when it eventually wears out, but I think it should last for years so long as I don’t scuff the base by putting it on the ground too much…

The other picture is of the lovely geometric design Flame created one afternoon with her box of shapes. I think she might enjoy designing quilts.

Entry plonked in Crochet @ 12:53 pm
Tagged thusly: Crochet, polythene bags

After quite a bit of unpicking and re-doing (originally thought I was making a ‘top hat’ sort of shape, then a beret, but then finally what you see here), I’ve finished the hat I promised Pixie as a justification for buying the Glastonbury yarn. grin

The ‘Hazy Alpaca’ hat is double-crocheted in circles, increasing as necessary to make it the right shape, and I sized the hat for an adult because Pixie is growing very quickly and she gets upset when she grows out of things I have made for her.

Once the final incarnation of the hat was underway, I had developed the plan of making it look like the crochet had been done in vertical sections and then stitched together with the Kidsilk Haze. In reality, that would have been hard to achieve without a pattern because I would probably have ended up with an misshapen hat once it had all been sewn together! So… I started at the top of the head and then simply worked around in circles (not spirals), changing colour as necessary. This meant that I wouldn’t waste any yarn by leaving long ends, or have a screaming fit if I had to unravel some of the work because it wasn’t shaping properly!

Thus, the Inca Cloud colour blocking was done by dropping the current yarn and picking up the next one to change colour. At the end of each circuit, I chained three stitches and turned the work to pick up the right colour yarns as I came back the other way. To rotate the colours, I just crocheted on with the same colour I was using, passing passed by the colour I would normally have picked up. I passed the second colour up past the rows for which it wasn’t needed, and it seemed to work out OK because all the row-skipping yarn was passed up on the inside of the hat where it wasn’t obvious. I don’t know if this was the right way of handling the colour aspect, but it was certainly the simplest plan I could up with.

Once I was finished with the alpaca and all the ends were tucked in, I double-crocheted up the ‘seams’ with the Kidsilk Haze and then ran some more of it around the brim. Incidentally, I noticed the Inca Cloud yarn was slightly fatter/woollier in the Fuchsia than it was in the other two shades, but it doesn’t seem obvious when the hat is being worn. Texture-wise, I noticed a nice synergy between the Kidsilk Haze and Fuchsia Inca Cloud that suggested they’d like to get felty together. I might put them together again, as I have a good amount of each left over.

Oh, and I must mention the lovely tablecloth you can see here. We call it the Easter tablecloth because that’s when we use it most, but my mother used to bring it out on Sundays for tea when I was a little girl. It’s the most wacky design – lots of sunny yellow fish in silhouette on a bright white background. Completely crazy, but utterly fab!

Entry plonked in Crochet @ 9:48 pm
Tagged thusly: artesano alpaca, artesano inca cloud, Crochet, crochet hat, rowan kidsilk, rowan yarn