Crochet Garland

After conquering the old Granny squares again, I decided to step up to the next challenge. Sometime last year I had a moment of craft serendipity, when I saw a crochet garland for sale in the gift shop of a Helsinki Art Gallery, and had that typical crafters response of "ooh I really like that, but I can make that for much less" (it is typical isn't it, or is it just me?) Certainly the garland was selling for around £20 for 15  flowers, which is expensive compared to the materials to make one, but cheap labour for all that hand crochet.

I think within the week we were back in the UK, and the new issue of Mollie Makes was in the Newsagent, with a crochet flower garland pattern in it. Perfect! At that point I just filed the thought away to try and remember when I was looking for a gift, or a new project.

A couple of trips later, and we had a string of flights and train trips to take, so I bought a few balls of mercerised cotton, and used the Mollie Makes gift crochet hook from an earlier edition and decided to give the flower patterns a whirl, as something I should be able to manage in the confines of planes, trains and trams. I copied out a few of the patterns into my notebook so I always had them, some yarn and the hook in my handbag, and by the end of the trip I had started to build a nice little stash of flowers and shapes.

I decided the first gift I would make from one would be to go in to the Baby Gift for a friend, and thought the silver, red and blue would be sweet as a decoration somewhere in a newborn baby boys room.

I'm really happy with it, and have enough yarn to make thousands more of the things! I'm going to try out a few more shapes and patterns from Ravelry and maybe make some for Christmas Gifts. Certainly seems like its a winner for a tiny WIP bag to always have in my handbag, car trip here, train ride there and I should have a few ready for Christmas easily.