Crochet baskets

15 Monday Apr 2013

Posted by Natasja in My crochet, Ta-daah!

Tags

crochet, crochet thread, Japanese crochet

In October 2012 I blogged about the great selection of Anchor crochet cotton I won. In that post, which you can read here, I said that I would use the crochet thread for a cell/mobile phone cover, a basket and a doily. I haven’t got round to the doily yet, I did make the cell/mobile phone cover but before I could photograph it for you I lost it (read: fell asleep on the train with the cover on my lap and jumped up when the train got to my station), and today I’m showing you the basket.

The basket is not big, and it’s shallow, but I think that’s a good thing. Working with crochet cotton I don’t think the sides would have been able to stand up if there were any more than 3 rows.

I especially love the little handles on the sides. You need very small buttons though!

It was such an easy pattern and pretty result, that I ended up making two.

crochet basket carnation crochet hook

These shallow crochet baskets will be perfect for keeping odds & ends together. I can see it on a table in your hallway for the car keys, on a dresser for perfume bottles, or the bathroom for the handwash and hand lotion. You can see it too can’t you? Yes, I know you can! If you want to make one (or two) for yourself, here is the nitty-gritty:

Pattern: Lace Baskets from the Kyuuto! Japanese Crafts! Lacy Crochet book.
Hook: 1.5 mm
Yarn: Aida 10 in silver grey and Freccia 6 in shade 01442
Modifications: For the silver grey basket I had to add an extra round before starting with the sides, as the crochet thread is thinner than the Freccia 6 and I wanted my baskets to be the same size.

I’m giving these baskets away to friends on foreign shores so my desk still needs a basket for post-it notes and pens. I think I’ll make my one in shades of green. Striped!

Blue Japanese Top – Ta-daaaaaah!

10 Wednesday Apr 2013

Posted by Natasja in My crochet, Ta-daah!, Yarnbombing

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

crochet, Japanese crochet, wearable crochet

Here it is. My blue crochet top hooked from a Japanese pattern!

This is my second project from a Japanese pattern. The first one was the red variegated scarf which I blogged about here. The scarf was given away as a gift, so this is the first item I can wear.

I really, really, like it! It feels great walking around London in something I crocheted myself (that always feels good), but this time I add a swagger because I know that the pattern I followed didn’t have one single word in English to guide me!

Focus on the close-up of the crochet, not the tiramisu (if you can…)

Back view

The nitty-gritty is as follows:

Pattern: On Ravelry this pattern is called #4 2-way Top because that’s really what it is. You have two construction options. My way, and leaving the front open to make it into a cardigan. It’s from the Japanese book Easy Popular Knit and Crochet Wear which I bought from Pomadour24 on Etsy.
Crochet hook: 3 mm
Modifications: To make it the right length I had to add a few rows of the shell pattern before starting with the fan pattern at the bottom. If I could, I would have added extra squares but I had ready crocheted the shell rows on either side of the squares so couldn’t go back and add more squares to make it longer.
Yarn: I used Garnstudio Drops Delight in Shade 03. The yarn is a holiday momento from a weekend in Barcelona in January. I bought it at a shop called All You Knit Is Love. The sweetest little shop! Tucked away in a alley close to the Picasso museum. If you find yourself in Barcelona, be sure to pop in.

Yarn!!!!

Japanese crochet really isn’t that difficult. Honestly. At the end of this blogpost I give a few pointers and links to helpful websites.In case you’re wondering, yes I’ve already bought the yarn to crochet my next Japanese top. I mean, I have a whole book filled with patterns. How can I not?!

*The setting for these photos is of course Genoa, Italy on the weekend of their citywide yarnbombing, Intrecci Urbani. I blogged about it here.

Granny squares for Mencap

06 Saturday Apr 2013

Posted by Natasja in My crochet

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

charity, cotton yarn, Country Homes & Interiors magazine, crochet, granny square, magazine, Mencap

As promised in an earlier blogpost, I’ve crocheted granny squares for the Country Homes & Interiors Magazine Crochet Club. All the squares they receive will be made into accessories and auctioned in aid of Mencap.

Granny square piles

As always it was immensely enjoyable making granny squares. I just love, love, love traditional granny squares! In a 6-round granny square there are so many design options. Six rounds of colour to play with! I unashamedly indulged in colourful randomness – hooker style.

I raided my cotton DK stash for these squares. It was lovely working with cotton again after all the Stylecraft acrylics for the yarnbomb. I’m not a yarn snob, really I’m not, but man, cotton is just so much nicer to work with. Most of the yarn in these granny squares are Rowan Handknit Cotton, but there are some Stylecraft Classique Cotton and a few rounds in Gedifra Fiorista Fino too.

I like the idea that my fourteen granny squares will be incorporated into something that will raise money for a very deserving charity like Mencap. I wonder what kind of accessories the granny squares will be made into. Afghans, pot holders, cushions? I hope Country Home & Interiors Magazine keep us updated on their blog.

Have you made any granny squares for the Crochet Club? I’d love to hear from you if you have.

Surbiton Roundabout yarnbomb

01 Monday Apr 2013

Posted by Natasja in My crochet, Yarnbombing

≈ 24 Comments

Tags

crochet, crochet art, Surbiton, Surbiton Food Festival, surbiton roundabout, surbiton traffic island, video, Yarnbomb

No introduction needed for this photo, hey? As you can see we yarnbombed the lamp post and five bollards on the traffic island in front of Surbiton station.

In the space of one hour, the roundabout went from drab and dreary to striped and adorned with fruity bunting – the way all roundabouts should be I think.

It was soooooo much fun and I’m still on a yarn high!

Bobi Robson, from The Craft Inn came along to give John and I a hand.

Her help was much appreciated, and it ended up being a brilliant team effort. John had the great idea to bring along packaging tape just in case we needed it to keep the stripes up on the lamp post (and we did!), Bobi suggested we attach the bunting lower down on the lamp post to prevent the wind from blowing the bunting into cyclist or cars, and when we realised our cable ties were too short to go around the bollards, I suggested we tie the bunting to the cable between the bollards. Three problems – three genius minds at work.

I think John was amazing. He sewed two of the granny squares onto the bollards (a very unmanly thing to do for, what felt like, the whole of Surbiton to see) and then took on the task of getting really, really high on the ladder to put up the bunting (thereby redeeming his manliness).

The end result of our hour on the traffic island, and my four weeks of crochet, is a brilliantly colourful work of yarn graffiti.

Bobi and I at the Surbiton roundabout yarnbomb.

I hope the yarnbomb will raise awareness for the upcoming Surbiton Food Festival. If you found this blogpost because you Googled “weird woolen stripes on Surbiton roundabout” please also visit the Surbiton Food Festival website here, and of course come to the festival in May, otherwise my hours of crochet would have been in vain.

Well, probably not totally in vain because even if people don’t realise a food festival is coming, at least they can appreciate a bit of stripey colour in the middle of Surbiton.

And as you can gather, I thoroughly enjoyed myself and I’m kinda proud of myself. This is my biggest, most prominent yarnbomb yet. The other three (warm-up yarnbomb dare I say?) are here here and here.

I hope you enjoy the new and improved traffic island. As far as I know the yarnbomb is staying up until the end of the Food Festival (19th of May) so you will have a lot of time to appreciate it in all it’s fruity glory.

Here’s a video giving you a 360 degree view of the yarnbomb.

Keep your eyes peeled around Surbiton, as Bobi and her Craft Inn pals will be adding more granny squares to the railings around the roundabout, and other crafty items will pop up around St. Andrews Square. You have been warned. The craft bombers are coming!

P.S. If you ever get the urge to crochet apples, pears, oranges or strawberries like I did for this yarnbomb, there is a link to the pdf pattern in this blogpost. The fruit were originally designed by Louise Howe. They make excellent coasters. Which is what she designed them to be…. until this yarnbomber got her hook into them.

I yarnbombed a yarnbomb

28 Thursday Mar 2013

Posted by Natasja in My crochet, Yarnbombing

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

Genoa, Intrecci Urbani, Yarnbomb, yarnstorm

Have you ever yarnbombed a yarnbomb? I have!

Mo, a very sweet Blogworld friend, read my post about my trip to Genoa to see Intrecci Urbani and asked me whether I would take something crocheted along to put up on her behalf. I thought it was a great idea, so of course I agreed.

Mo sent me three hexagon crochet motifs and a dragonfly. The hexagons were leftovers from this blanket, done in a very soft luxurious naturallycaron yarn. The Dragonfly is the cutest little thing!

Her colours immediately reminded me of squares I had made for Rachel’s Crochet Along (which I had given up on….). I was planning to take one or two of my CAL blocks with me to Genoa anyway, so when Mo’s hexagons arrived I decided to combine our pieces into one! That way I could quickly attach our yarnbomb to wherever – thinking one big piece will be quicker to put up than six smaller pieces.

I used my Twin Stripes, Tiny Textures and Square Target squares from the CAL. I blogged about them, and others, here. Mo’s dragonfly was sewed onto the Tiny Textures block and I had a deep red Stylecraft DK in my stash that matched Mo’s hexagons perfectly, so I used that to crochet everything together.

I attached long pieces of yarn to 6 corners of the piece so that I could just tie it to wherever, without having to worry about doing any sewing.

On Friday I took our hexagons & squares yarnbomb piece with me when I went exploring in Genoa. John pointed out the bench below. It was one of only a few that hadn’t been yarnbombed. The perfect victim!

Hard at work, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible:

Sneaky, very sneaky:

Using simple bows to tie the piece to the bench worked really well.

And there you have it. Two Brits (Mo was there in spirit) yarnbombed the Intrecci Urbani Genoa yarnbomb. That’s how we roll 🙂

Image

My Sunday afternoon

10 Sunday Mar 2013

Tags

crochet, Japanese crochet

I’m on a Japanese crochet adventure…

Posted by Natasja | Filed under My crochet, My ramblings

≈ 12 Comments

Surbiton fruity yarnbomb update

25 Monday Feb 2013

Posted by Natasja in My crochet, Pattern, Yarnbombing

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

crochet, free pattern, Surbiton, Surbiton Food Festival

I think I’ve had my fill of fruit for now: 14 Days of crocheting fruit (including on the 07:26 to Waterloo and lunch hours in Caffe Nero), four balls of Stylecraft Special Chunky and six balls of Sirdar Hayfield Bonus Chunky later, I’ve made 64 pieces of fruit for the Surbiton Food Festival yarnbomb.

64 Pieces of crochet fruit over 14 days works out to just under 5-a-day. How health conscious am I?!

Crocheting the fruit was fun, but doing the stems and leaves and then having to sew the three (tiny) parts together got a bit tedious by the time I got to pear number 15, give or take an orange or two.

Now, thankfully, it’s time to move on to stripes. My favourite thing in the whole world. Just mindless trebles in any colour and I can go as mad and bright as I want. In fact, for the purpose of a yarnbomb the more outrageous the colours the better!

My amazing husband was with me two weeks ago when I went to Surbiton to take measurements. He is a stickler for detail and an excellent draughtsman. With his accurate measurements and my love of colour, the yarnbomb is going to look great!

Lovely Alice of Knit n Run 4 Sanity has blogged about her very cute cherries, grapes and strawberry contributions here. She even shares her pattern with us. Thank you so much Alice!!

Just to recap, the details of the fruity yarnbomb is in this post, and the pattern for the crocheted fruit is on this link: Crochet fruit pattern. Anyone can crochet fruit and send it to me, as long as it reaches me before 22 March 2013. Apart from Alice and Louise (the designer of the fruit patterns) I have a lady from Dubai who is contributing and I think one or two from South Africa as well!

If you are also crocheting fruit for the yarnbomb, how many have you made?

Getting my hook on

15 Friday Feb 2013

Posted by Natasja in My crochet, My ramblings

≈ 3 Comments

in the Caffe Nero next to my work. Crochet apples and cappuccino go well together.

You can be part of a yarnbomb!

11 Monday Feb 2013

Posted by Natasja in My crochet, Pattern, Yarnbombing

≈ 17 Comments

Tags

crochet, crochet applique, Surbiton Food Festival, Yarnbomb, yarnstorm

You know you want to!

All you have to do is crochet a piece of fruit and post it to me. No measurements to take, no getting onto ladders, no braving the elements to put up the yarnbomb. You dont even have to find a pattern, I’ll supply you with one. Just raid your stash, hook and go to the post office. Are you in? Want to know more?

The yarnbomb is for Surbiton’s first annual Food Festival from 4 to 19 May 2013. The organisers contacted Bobi of The Craft Inn to do the marketing for the festival and being a crafter extrodinaire she immediately thought of a craftbomb. My Thames Ditton yarnbombs (here, here and here) caught her attention so she asked me if I wanted to be part of this great crafty endeavour. Of course I said yes!

I don’t want to tell you exactly what I’m planning or how I’m going to use your fruit, but I can tell you that I need to cover a lot of space. I need a lot, or big pieces, of crochet. All before 29 March.

This is where you come in. It would be great if my blog buddies from all over the world could be part of the yarnbomb. A multi-national fruit salad for Surbiton!

As I receive your pieces I’ll give you credit on this blog ~~and if you include a business card, I will attach it to one of your fruit as well~~ . Due to a change of venue I will no longer be able to attach business cards to the crochet.

As for the pattern, you can find it here: Fruit crochet for Surbiton Food Festival (the link will open a PDF document). The pattern is in fact four crochet fruit coaster patterns, all courtesy of Louise Howe of the Lally Lou Lou blog, that I just put together in one document. Louise’s original patterns can be found here and here. Thank you so, so, so much Louise for agreeing to me using your fruit coasters for the yarnbomb. Dear readers, Louise has also promised to send me a couple of apples, pears and strawberries to use in the yarnbomb. It’s only right that the designer should have her handiwork included in the yarnbomb, don’t you think?

These are the fruit that I’ve made so far. I used Double Knit, Aran and Chunky yarn. I think towards the deadline of 29 March I’ll probably be sticking to only Chunky yarn as it works up so quickly.

The orange was made using Double Knit cotton and a 4 mm crochet hook:

Sliced in half apple in Chunky with a 7 mm crochet hook (and a dodgy uneven backstitch):

Apple in Chunky with a 7 mm crochet hook:

Strawberry in Aran cotton and a 5 mm crochet hook. There is a combination of white french knots and two straight stitches to indicate the strawberry hairs. After three french knots I gave up and stuck to the straight stitches:

Pear in Aran cotton and a 5 mm crochet hook. Later I realised that the pear looks more like a pear if the leaf is at the top of the stem (the way Louise does it), not the bottom :

I just want to stress that (if you haven’t already gathered this from my backstitch, strawberry hairs and pear leaf mistakes) the fruit doesn’t have to be perfect. Honestly, it’s just a bit of fun (I can hear Uncle Bryn‘s voice in my head as I’m typing here). The yarnbomb will be outside during the British Month Of April and when all the pieces of crochet are put together no-one will notice mistakes, so just enjoy it.

And of course you can send me any crocheted fruit, you don’t have to use Louise’s pattern. In fact, I hope someone will send me something different. The multi-national fruit salad could do with lemon, lime, cherry and banana.

When you’re ready to post me your crocheted fruit, send me a message and I will email you my address. The yarnbomb will be going up over the Easter weekend, and I need time to do my thing to turn the pieces into a workable yarnbomb, so I need your fruit before 22 March 2013 please.

I’m really looking forward to receiving your yarnbomb contributions. Remember, every time you finish a piece of crocheted fruit, it counts as one of your five a day. Fact.

How to de-Freddy a sweater

04 Monday Feb 2013

Posted by Natasja in My crochet, My ramblings

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

clothing, crochet, Simply Crochet magazine

I have a H&M v-neck striped sweater that John absolutely hates. As a rule he encourages me to be unique, embrace my style and wear unexpected colour combinations – all things that drew me to the sweater in the first place – but this sweater is an absolute no-go for him. Literally. “No, I’m not going out with you in that.”

He says it reminds him of Freddy Krueger, he of A Nightmare on Elm Street fame. Freddy is so frightfully ugly, I don’t even want to put a picture of him in this post. In stead, here is a link to the Google image search for him. Go have a look (quickly!), then come back to the blog and read on.

Did you see the resemblance between Freddy’s red & black striped sweater and my pink, purple & black striped sweater? I don’t think mine screams Freddy Krueger, but I guess the black horizontal stripes and pinkish-red is close enough to bring back memories of watching the horror film. Knowing my husband, he probably watched A Nightmare on Elm Street when he was way too young and was scared sh*tless – hence visions of Freddy Krueger when his wife is wearing a sweater with black horizontal stripes.

No matter what the reasons for his Sweater Aversion, if I want to wear my sweater when out & about with him, I need to find a way to de-Freddy it. Enter Simply Crochet magazine Issue 2. It dropped through our front door on Saturday (yeah!!!). Just like Issue 1, it’s jam-packed with crochet projects, one of which is a crochet pocket patch. When I saw it, I just knew it’s the perfect adornment to de-Freddy my sweater.

I whipped it up in ten minutes using a 3 mm crochet hook and black Elle Family Knit 4-ply yarn, and sewed it onto the sweater with invisible thread.