Crochet to Go

Here's a fun (though very time consuming) project from the Readymade blog, crocheting old plastic bags into a very durable shopping bag. Probably worthwhile if you have mountains of bags floating around your house.

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Originally uploaded by aliciamalia.

Thanks to Jessica for this fascinating link. It's a call for participants for helping to knit and crochet an entire wedding--the food, drinks, flowers, you name it. It's quite odd and very engrossing. I'd recommend checking out the links at the bottom of the page--there are several decent-looking crochet flower patterns. The shop section is truly bizarre--everything from cigarettes to shoelaces to instructions for making a knitted willy (their words, not mine).

Thanks to Suzanne for sending a link to this fascinating project. The Institute For Figuring is crocheting a coral reef--in their words, it's "a woolly celebration of the intersection of higher geometry and feminine handicraft, and a testimony to the disappearing wonders of the marine world. " They're accepting samples from crocheters. Here's the complete article.

On a related topic, NPR just did a piece on hyperbolic geometry and crochet. A lot of the pictures look fairly similar to the coral reef representations.

I've been on a major hat binge for the past few weeks. These are all variations on the hat pattern I developed for the Crochet To Go Deck. Adam wanted a hat of his own, and I wanted to make sure that the instructions for medium and large sizes actually work. (Amazingly enough they did. It was a big relief.) So I started with the basic, a single stripe on a solid background, moved on to a stripe with a colored border on either side, and then made a two-stripe version for good measure. All in different types of yarn to make sure the pattern continued to function. How's that for thorough?

And yes, in case you're wondering, it's awfully cold in the Bay Area right now.

This is a variation on a charmeuse clutch I saw in InStyle magazine. I loved the crocheted trim, but wanted a simplified version with cleaner lines.

I really pleased with the final version. It's a relatively simple pattern, and the purse itself is quite functional--it closes with multiple snaps, so your stuff won't fall out. I've included a picture of the interior in the pattern notes.

This is my next project (once I finish the pile of stuff I'm working on). Aprons and crochet are two of my favorite things--why did I never think to combine them?