When I started this post, I wrote a long history of my own crochet education. As it went on and on, I realized it made me happy to remember my Grandma and that moment of discovering treble crochet, but that the story was rather boring for anyone else. Reflecting on my crochet journey was not a total waste of time, though. I thought of six tips for becoming a better crocheter.
Earlier this week, I posted the pattern for crocheting the pieces for the Easy Crochet Backpack. Today, I will walk through the instructions for assembling those pieces into a cute bag! We will take it slowly and do this assembly in 15 steps. At the end, you will have a backpack in which you can carry yarn and a half-finished project, overnight clothes, or stuffed animals!
For a while, I have wanted a project backpack to carry some yarn and a stitch dictionary on car trips or to crafting circles. I could have used one of my cute Portland corduroy backpacks, or…I could make one. And really, can one ever have too many bags? This crochet backpack will comfortably carry 6-8 large skeins of yarn and a stitch dictionary. Alternatively, one can throw a sweatshirt, a pair of jeans, and a t-shirt into the bag for an overnight outing. The flowers and leaves give it a fun (end of) summer feel and the green drawstrings add a vine-like touch to the purple and lavender bag. Here is a free crochet pattern for this Easy Crochet Backpack. This is Part I, where we crochet all the pieces needed for the backpack.
A chunk of my crochet time comes from my lunch break at work. I try to take something minimally messy to eat and I get in as many stitches as I can, frequently at my desk. This leads, at times, to questions. There are a couple of particularly crafty and kind people who show genuine interest. While I was making dragonflies earlier in the week, one of the crafty kind people asked, “What are you going to do with these tiny dragonflies?” And while I had visions of decorating everything in my life with them, I had to think realistically about what I could do with them. In addition to crocheting, I love to twist wire and string beads, so I have a fair amount of supplies with which to do just that. I decided to make crochet dragonfly jewelry with these tiny crochet dragonflies!
I love dragonflies! But for some reason, this is the first dragonfly I have ever tried to crochet. After experimenting with size 80 crochet thread (too tiny!!), I made this little insect friend with size 20 crochet cotton. I’m excited to share the pattern for this crochet dragonfly!
Crocheting leaves is the crochet equivalent of eating candy. They are quick, easy, instantly gratifying, and you can go through a bunch without even realizing it. Just as we don’t create our meals out of candy (not many of them, anyway), we can’t create whole projects out of crochet leaves. They embellish and decorate items beautifully, but don’t make up a sweater, scarf, afghan, or slippers on their own. I certainly don’t want a life without candy, literal and metaphorical, so I present crochet leaf patterns with variations and some information on how to create your own variations.
I love almost everything about dyeing yarn with Kool-Aid: The ease of finding Kool-Aid, the price, the smell, the novelty, the colors, the fun. On the other hand, I cannot accurately predict the outcome and I’m struggling to get dark red to stay in the yarn. I’m happy with the effects I achieved with dyeing the yarn this time, but I’m not entirely sure that the color will not bleed if the yarn gets wet. Today, I will share how to Kool-Aid dye silk yarn. I’ll share tips and cautions I discovered through trial and error (so many errors). Even if the results aren’t perfect, dyeing with Kool-Aid is still inexpensive and fun!
This lacy waves crochet scarf started life as a shawl idea. That is to say, I was in the process of designing a shawl when I realized I didn’t have enough of the yarn I started it with. Soon, this scarf emerged into being.