I am bravely continuing with my crochet endeavours. Three attempted amigurumi creations (one elephant, one grim reaper and one cat) are in the bin. Everything seems to turn out too big and I'm ending up with gaps, especially when decreasing. I am still searching for the perfect hook-yarn-tension combination to get the firm, well-defined crochet fabric you need for toys. I'm trying Rowan hand knit cotton with a 3.5mm hook next. Watch this space...
In the meantime, I did manage to produce this lovely drawstring purse. One advantage with taking up crochet is that I can stalk Amy Gaines in a whole new media. This is a PDF pattern from her Etsy shop for three cute drawstring purses. I picked the strawberry as it looked like the easiest one to make.
I crocheted the body of the purse with Debbie Bliss Rialto Aran and a 4.25mm (size G hook). I actually bought three wonderful polymer clay crochet hooks from NK Designs so I have some proper US sizes now.
I am not doing badly with the crocheting in the round now, although I do seem to accidentally lose and gain stitches a fair bit. The stitch marker for the end of the round also occasionally falls off. I have been surprised by how yarn-greedy crochet is compared with knitting. I nearly ran out of a brand new 50g ball making this.
I found adding the eyelet row in green much easier than the equivalent in knitting. The drawstrings themselves are just two long crochet foundation chains tied at the ends.
Amazingly, given the size of my bead stash, I had to go out and buy the two irridescent green beads that are fastened to the ends of the drawstrings as well as the gold bugle beads that I sewed on for the strawberry seeds. I was very diligent and sewed each bugle bead on individually rather than trailing the thread across the back.
So, at least one fairly successful crochet project. Grim reaper attempt #2 is next, so we'll see how we go...
Melx
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