Crochet round stones,  into hoops and  round glass

I love to experiment with crocheting round things. I have a bog project planned along these lines once  I have completed work on BRISWOOL which is a huge project I am leading to create a knitted, crocheted and needlefelted model of Bristol

II am back in the shop at work tomorrow ...in the meantime here are some photographs of crochet  round objects ..all small experiments leading to bigger projects....i love to learn new skills

Tip - If you want to do this but yourself a good book of thread crochet motifs ..they size up well in dc cotton thread for jars etc and look great in thread crochet..and you need a steel hook for thread crochet and  ive used a size 3mm  hook for everything else ( soft touch hook)

Felt experiments 

Over the last year or two I have been exploring lots of ways of using felt and felting .  ..we sell all kinds of materials for this in the shop but  I don't get enough time to play with them

I have ruined many many wool jumpers buy accidentally felting them in the washing machine . The saddest example of this was a  beautiful hand knitted jumper designed by my friend  as part of a collection she was selling in Libertys  in London . The jumper was like a magic carpet and was based around Indian miniatures ..it was gorgeous  but sadly a momentary lapse about 20 years ago and it ended up about a quarter of the original size !!..I still miss that jumper

Anyways  now I am  experimenting with making things felt on purpose.   I am waiting to take delivery next week of  a range of yarns that are made for knitting or crocheting  "Filtz" yarns f and its  going to  really good fun. 

Here is a little flower  i made with some red felting yarn. I crocheted a flower and then just washed it .. In the photograph are also some little red  needelfelted hearts  made by pricking in a cookie cutter......I stock hundreds of colours of merino  tops. You just  prick with your needlefelting needle inside the  cookie cutter and hey presto you get a perfectly shaped  bit of  felt

here is  a list of all the ways that you can felt

Wet Wrapping  - using  merino tops - ( those lovely  unspun wool fibres ) you can wrap items such as plastic eggs or other shapes and then tie tightly in a pair of old tights and put in the washing machine..this way you can make hollow objects . You may need to wash twice to make the felt really firm 

Wet felting  - I  tried this on a course and hated it - just made my hands really sore . You use lots of soap and a mat and  basically rub the fibres together using  friction and a  rough mat . You can also make beads etc

Needlefelting  round  fibres. This is the method used to produce all those lovely little creatures etc  We adapted this method during the coral reef project so that we could quickly produce  2d shapes of fish .  here is a turtle that i made and some of the fish we made in the workshops  i delivered.  Most of the people had never done this before

Before Christmas I started to combine needlefelting with felties and here are some little reindeer I made this way

You can also felt around  polystyrene balls and then  embellish them with  beads or sequins or embroidery . I have collected together lots of examples of this on Pinterest. I am currently making some  but not ready to show them yet


You can felt jumpers deliberately ( must be wool) on boil wash in the machine and them  needeleft on top of the felted jumper

Here is a picture of the yarns that you can use to knit or crochet and then felt in the washing machine. I made the bowl one evening.  You can also use wool as long as it is not  superwash as that has been treated not to shrink...These yarns are by Rico and  hold the colour at 60.  IM just waiting now to get some Austermann yarns for the shop and Ill be testing those and sharing in due course

Right  I am off to  play with resin, continue to crochet into some wire hoops and  do a few more rows of my crochet flower rug x

In the beginning .. 

I learnt to crochet because  I cannot whistle ..REALLY.  At school the children used to play a game called the whistling pony game  and I could not whistle so they  barred me and I sat feeling rather dejected on the side of the playing ground

A short while later I went away with my Grandma Vera and Auntie Bubbles ( so called because she had curly hair as a girl like the Pears soap advert ) She was called that all her life

Anyway I  told them  about the pony game and they  suggested I learnt to crochet  and took me to buy some yarn, I distinctly remember the colours. I chose greys and pinks  and a bit of purple.

I used to sit  for hours and hours  in the porch  at playtimes making bigger and bigger granny squares. I was particularly fascinated about what I could do with the colours. I was about 9yrs old  at the time

I don't know what happened to those squares. No-oner got round to showing me how to sew them together. I used one to mend the leg on my favourite toy "Deda "  I still have Deda but I don't have the rest of the crochet.

Tonight I am crocheting  into metal hoops with  thread crochet but I have spent most of this holiday  "finishing things "..more on that another day ..here are some pics

New year  and a new start

So here it is my very own  upgraded and  ready to go blog. Here I will be writing   about  the things I make, things you can make,  telling stories about making  and memories of making  and sharing  ideas, inspirations and more . Some of it will be serious and some  silly hopefully lots of it will make you smile