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String, string’s a marvellous thing

March 23, 2006 by Katie Lee

Since my clothes making isn’t going so well at the moment I thought I’d stick up a pic of this string thing I’m making from the Erika Knight’s Simple Crochet book (obviously I haven’t learned my lesson about attempting to make tasteful objects after the last debacle.) Well, I say “I’m making”, actually I haven’t done anything to it for weeks now.

Why? Because it’s bloody hard work, that’s why. Crocheting baskets with string may be all well and good in Ms Knight’s household, but in mine it leads to nothing but callouses and misery. I’ll finish it off eventually. Just need to wait till the welts have cleared up.

Filed Under: Shinykatie Makes... Tagged With: Craft, crochet, crochet books, Good Hooking

Trendy Tea Cosy

March 11, 2006 by Katie Lee

Milway bought me Erika Knight’s Simple Crochet book for Christmas. Until that point I’d been labouring under the illusion that the only way to crochet was with tongue firmly in cheek, but suddenly here was a design book with tasteful patterns in that wouldn’t look out of place in a some City-type’s po-faced loft apartment. Maybe I too could be tasteful!

Alas, the taste-gods have so far rejected me. This trendy tea cosy (or cozy to US citizens) was my verson of the cafetiere cosy (!). Possibly my first mistake was foolishly believing the I have it in me to work out my own designs. My second was ignoring the requests for posh black cotton yarn and using cheapo black acrylic, of which I have an abundant supply. My third was attempting to make something for myself (I’ve proved time and time again that I can’t make something for myself with any hope of success) The gods were already displeased.

I was in a posh hotel making this (a birthday present from Al – I sure know how to make the most of a romantic weekend away, eh?!) so really the surroundings should have been perfect. However, the fatal flaw in all that was that I guessed how big it needed to be to fit my teapot. Sure enough, it turned out to be too small.

I was going to bodge a bit of extra crochet onto the side, but the very thought of giving up my aspirational tea cosy for a half-arsed black cover made me too depressed for words, and the miserable thing has been consigned to my wool box until the day I spot some hapless soul with a correctly proportioned unclothed pot.

Filed Under: Shinykatie Makes... Tagged With: Craft, crochet, crochet books, Good Hooking, tea cosy, tea cozy

Crochet Laptop Bag

January 3, 2006 by Katie Lee


Yes, I really did crochet myself a laptop bag. Thing is, the laptop is teeny tiny – about A5 size – and so no normal laptop case was going to cut it. I made it while sat in hospital waiting for Al’s Gran to recover after her op went horribly wrong (thankfully she’s on the road to recovery now) and it helped to keep me busy and gave me something else to think about that wasn’t too taxing. The pattern is based on one from this fantastic old book called “Louisa Calder’s Creative Crochet“, which is full of loads of garish designs – just the sort of thing I love.

She’s obviously a true English eccentric, and the ghostwriter is at pains to point out that she comes from an artistic environment and that her husband, Alexander Calder, was “one of the greatest sculpters of all time”. Quite what he had to do with it is a mystery to me, but this was published back in 1979, so maybe including your husband’s bio in your own book was less strange back then.

One of the best things about this book is the inclusion of some truly awful designs, that even I, with my love of all things bright and woolly, can’t bring myself to admire. There’s a whole section on creating woollen ties for men to wear with their suits, and since the designs are very similar to this bag above, you can get a fair idea of just how horrified any man would be to be handed one of these as a gift.

And along with some remarkable revolting neckties, there are a a few designs that appear to have been knocked up by the artist’s small, academically inept, relative. Probably around the 6 year’s old mark. But no, we discover that Louisa herself is responsible for stitching the red bag together on the outside with black wool and uneven stitches, because imperfections should be left if it “enhances the final result”. Certainly, the designs that quite clearly drop and regain stitches liberally throughout for no apparent reason are “enhanced” by the look, but whether that’s a good thing in this case is something I’d be willing to dispute.

But despite much guffawing at some of the things our Louisa felt happy to include, she gets full credit for giving me some great ideas of things you can do with simple double crochet (US sc). Specifically, the colour changing is a real eye opener. Usually you’re told to pull through the new colour as the final loop in a stitch, but these designs start a new stitch with a new colour, giving a little “bird in flight” dot effect that works really nicely. She does it the whole way through, and while I don’t like it when changing rows (I’m too anal for such sloppiness), used to add little colour flecks, or bands of colour, it works really well.

The only downside to creating a bag like this all in Double Crochet is that I find it really hard to work up any pace and so it takes a lot longer than making Granny Squares, for example. There aren’t actually any patterns in the book, you get general written instructions on how to do it and what to chain, etc, but after that you just have to work it out from the pictures. I should have put in a row of trebles for the pull ties, but I didn’t read the instructions properly.

Filed Under: Shinykatie Makes... Tagged With: Craft, crochet, crochet bag, crochet books, crochet laptop bag, Good Hooking

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