My discovery of Tunisian Crochet!

This is just a quick post as I wanted to write a little bit about how I started this form of crochet. About 3 weeks ago I stumbled across a video of Tunisian crochet, I only clicked on it because I had not heard the word Tunisian before, and not only did I think it looked great but I couldn't believe how easy it was. A quick Google image search into Tunisian crochet pillows and patterns and I was determined to try it. I started off by making two very small squares and I couldn't believe how simple it was!

This is a great YouTube video to show how to follow a pattern:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=dyO-yQd7Ozg

I really could not wait to start my own Tunisian crochet picture, and because my boyfriend loves Mario I did a quick search for Mario patterns. I found a few, and put my favorite ones in Excel to follow. These are the red and green "1up" mushrooms from Mario that I made:

I didn't want lots of wool crossing over on the back of the work, so I made lots of small balls of wool of each colour. This meant that I was changing wool every couple of stitches at some points, and had about 20 ends to weave in afterwards! From start to finish (including weaving in the ends) each picture probably took about 3 hours. Having seen other people's blogs and how fast they complete their crochet I hope I will eventually pick up some speed, but I'm very content at the moment to go at my own speed and I'm very happy with my little pictures.

I'm not very good at biting off only as much as I can chew, and my new current project is no exception! I'm going to write about it in my next post as it's going to be quite a long project :)

Isobel Hope

Memories of my first project

As I mentioned in my first post this blog is just so I can share my learning and experiences, and something I think everyone will always remember is their very first completed project, so I thought I'd share mine.

Obviously the very first thing I made were about 50 crochet squares whilst I was getting the hang of holding the hook, controlling the tension, picking up stitches etc. (it's amazing to think back to how hard I found it and how second nature it is now!). Once I'd really got the hang of that I headed off to YouTube to look for a project to make, and I saw lots of lovely purses and bags which inspired me to create a little purse of my own. Because I could only really do squares from double crochet I decided to make a rectangle and then fold it up to make the purse. I know this probably isn't a great description, so here is the picture of the finished purse:

Finished purse decorated with a flower I made later

I had done sewing before so once I had made the rectangle I folded it up into the purse shape and sewed up the sides. I didn't add any closing mechanism, the button and the flower are just for decoration. After I finished the purse I realised that it looked a bit plain, so I went back on YouTube and found this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6sW_nNpp14 by DreamBIGLover. This is definitely the video that inspired me to love crochet, I am eternally grateful to this video!

The same person who made that video also made other videos about making butterflies etc., so I thought I'd also put in here some pictures of my practice decorations:

Anyway, I've probably rambled on enough, I'd love to hear about other people's first projects and how they went! Please comment if you have a few minutes :)

Isobel Hope

About me and my crochet blog

I have decided to start this blog to share my experiences, failures, successes, ideas etc. of my crocheting. I have not been crochet that long; I tried it a few times about 2 years ago, then tried making the odd crochet square last year when someone bought me a crochet magazine with a started DVD in it, but its only in the last couple of months that I've become truly addicted to it! I've been spending any spare time watching YouTube videos and finding patterns on line, and as it's reading other people's blogs that inspired me to try crocheting I thought I would follow their example. I am still a relative beginner; I can do most stitches but I have only tried a few different projects and I'm still learning loads every time.

I first tried crochet a couple of years ago. My mum was into knitting, but she knew a little bit about crochet and showed me how to do a basic single crochet stitch. I went on YouTube and found out how to start with slip knot, chain and then how to turn at the end of each row and I started making lots of small squared out of any wool I could find. However, I didn't really know how to do anything else, and because I thought that all crochet was good for was for making patchwork blankets I quickly got bored and moved on.

It was about a year later when someone bought me a crochet magazine, and I remembered that I quite enjoyed it. I learned a few more stitches such as the double and triple, but again because I didn't really know what to do with it I left it. In the summer holidays last year (2012) I wanted to take up a hobby, so I started looking online at beginner crochet projects, and I loved them! There were all sorts of ideas to colourful pillows and blankets to gloves, hats, adorable arigurumi toys, phone cases, bags, the list goes on. I immediately threw myself into crocheting and I've been pretty obsessed with it ever since! I would like to make some "how-to" videos online, but I'm pretty nervous about that and so begins this blog, and I hope that if anyone is reading this then you get some ideas for your crochet, or even better give me some tips and ideas on how to improve mine as I am still very much learning as I go!

Isobel Hope