This Throwback Thursday doesn’t go quite so far back, we’re going to December 2021. I made a tapered French style rolling pin for my Mother-in-law and decorated it with painted daisies. I took some in process pictures, but because it was the holidays and I was in a whirlwind, I forgot to take final pictures. My MIL graciously sent me pictures of the rolling pin recently, so now I can share the project on the blog!
I’ve been thinking about doing some throwbacks to projects I did before I started this blog. Here is a crocheted and embroidered Roman style helmet that I made for my sister in 2016. Yes, I’ve always been a serial crafter.
It works! The three hook i-cord maker that I made (yesterday’s post) works quite well to make a cord that is usually made by sliding stitches off a needle to make a round.
Casting on three stitches on a regular knitting needle around size 11 makes the cleanest start, but if a needle isn’t available, making a chain with one hook, then placing the loops on the other two hooks, works just fine. To make the rest of the i-cord, you pull the loops on the hook down below the latches, lay the yarn loosely (really, I mean it), over the hooks just below the curve, and pull the loops up and over the hooks. The latches should close as the loops are pulled up, trapping the new section of yarn, and allowing the loops to pass over. A good strong tug brings the new yarn to make three loops, which you then pull back down below the latches. When I picked up the knack, it really went quite quickly.
I wanted my owl bag to have a zipper, so I took a zipper from my stash and made a line of chain stitches a yarn needle and matching yarn on each side of the zipper.
I then used a slip stitch to crochet the zipper to the inside of the bag, leaving one row as a lip at the top (mainly to help hide the zipper and stitches.)
Next for my mosaic crochet experiments is to attempt a chart of an image rather than a repeating pattern. I used the knitting chart app to plot out an owl, with the goal of making a small bag. I used a smaller hook to produce a dense fabric, and made the base as a long oval with increases on the ends in each row.
To make the walls of the bag, I worked in rounds of back loop single crochet, alternating colors, and dipping down with double crochet to block out color in the previous row. My original chart was close, but I had to make some adjustments as I went due to technical aspects. Here is the final chart.
And here is one side of the bag.
It is still recognizable as an owl, but does have a different look since the mosaic crochet does not produce perfectly square color blocks, at least at my current level of understanding. This phenomenon occurs in charted knitting too. I found the reverse side of the crochet intriguing, as it was almost a negative of the front.
Since I worked in the round, I didn’t cut my ends, but took them up to the next row as I circled. This way I had less yarn ends to weave in (yay!)
Critters and Craft 