Need inspiration? Here's one way to find it.

The people in my life have always been an inspiration for my crochet work. I love when someone says, "I wonder if you can make [x]." It then becomes a challenge. I immediately go into thinking, "how could I do that?" or "can it even be done?" Usually, the answer is yes. (Sometimes I get this inspiration by going to various websites, looking at designs for clothing, jewelry and more and wondering how could I do that with crochet?)

The other day, I was playing with some tulle I have hanging around the house. (Some of the results will be posted on March 30th for my date for Crochetville's blog tour for National Crochet Month. If you want to catch up or see the websites and posts from other associate professional and professional members of the Crochet Guild of America, you can do that here. Crochetville's Blog Tour Catch Up.) My husband was wondering if I'd be able to make a bracelet that had some translucent areas in it created by the tulle. The result? A few hours of playing and I came up with this design.

 

I was pretty pleased with the design overall, then I added tulle. It was a bit tricky to figure out how much tulle to add.

 

These, I thought, had too much tulle. It wasn't translucent enough for me. So I took some out.

 

I'm happy with the results. I really like my husband's idea of translucency. I may have to keep trying out new things branching off of this theme.

Does anyone have any "I wonder if you can make..." questions for me?

My Crochet Creative Process and Recent Experiments

The past few days I've realized that my creative process is probably not one many people share. When I first started to crochet, I thought about how great it would be to write my own patterns. Of course, I felt that I never knew enough to write any. The more I crochet, the more comfortable I get with experimenting with it. It's that experimenting that leads me to create some of the things I do.

A few years ago and after working with many different patterns, I started noticing a pattern among the patterns I was working. A scarf for example could be worked going horizontally or vertically, or a pattern or repetition of stitches within a pattern could be recalculated to be used in something else. Knowing this, it then becomes about being brave enough to try it. I tell many of my students that with crochet nothing is ever permanent until you've finished it off. With yarn, you can always start a project, do a few rows, experiment a little and rip it all out and start over. (This is a little harder when working with wire.)  If something doesn't work you can try recalculating your pattern or changing your stitch pattern/combination until you find one that works.

Recently, I've been playing with wire crochet and beads. With wire, this process is a little more complicated. The wire might bend making it difficult to take stitches out. If you do manage to take stitches out, you can only work with a section of wire so many times before the integrity of the wire weakens and eventually causes the wire to break. At some point you just have to decide if continuing is worth it, or if you can salvage what you can and start over to try again.

I usually find it easier if I try to draw it out before starting. My husband actually found one of my charts (for a pair of earrings that didn't work out so well) and asked me if I was planning on playing football. It was a bunch of x's for the single crochet stitches and an upside down J at the top to simulate the hook. I also wanted to add beads, so I had some of the x's with squares around them to mark where I wanted the beads. Nonetheless, I thought it was funny that he asked me that. :)

Here are just a few of the things that I've created. In the past few days.

A bracelet using love knots. I'll post the pattern for it soon.

Another version of a bracelet with love knots. I'll post this pattern soon as well.

 Some granny squares that will be earrings when I add them to the earring hooks. I got the idea to try it from a pattern on Ravelry. I added the beads.

Flower earrings, again from a pattern I found from Ravelry.

Wire crochet flower rings. I have yet to actually write this pattern down yet, but it's pretty easy.

Everyone has their own way of doing things. This way has worked for me so far.

Resourceful crochet materials

I read a post on Facebook a few days ago that mentioned how small local yarn stores thought crocheters were cheap because they didn't want to pay for the expensive yarns to keep them in business for long. That got me to thinking... Am I cheap? Sure, I may loathe the idea of spending a ton of money on yarn, but it's only because I already spend a bunch each year to maintain my stash. Of course this also depends on what I'm making. A sweater that I'd intend to wear demands more than the cheaper, rough acrylic yarns. I'll spend the extra few dollars to get the softer yarns.

All this thinking eventually lead me to looking into the things that people crochet with. I've found patterns from people who crochet with plastic bags (plarn), old clothes or pop can tabs and so much more. I suppose that's one of the wonderful things about crochet. You can use just about anything that can be cut into strips. Maybe this just follows the eco-friendly mindset of so many people, but I would hardly say that crocheters are cheap - just resourceful with their craft.

I have yet to dabble into this side of crochet, but I'm tempted to do so. I've started saving plastic bags a while ago and now they just take up space. Why not put them to good use? The weirdest thing, if you want to call it weird, that I've crocheted with thus far has been wire. After getting used to working with the wire it was actually fun to see what kinds of things I could make. I'm excited to try out these new materials and possibly search for additional things. I wonder what else I have lying around my house that I could crochet with...

What is the craziest material you've crocheted with?