I went to visit my most fantastic friend ever, Ken Wilson, in glorious green Kentucky. I have known Ken since I was 16 years old, and he has been my friend through thick & thin, for years on end. I will always have fond memories of the years we spent hanging out together in Texas. I love him dearly!

It so happened that it was Ken’s birthday when I went to see him, so I just had to crochet him something… and quick. So I got out the ‘Happy Small Goods of Crochet’ book and whipped up a small cotton bowl in no time:

As luck would have it, the inside of the bowl is exactly the same circumference as a Mason jar, which Ken uses to store his sticks of incense. So I didn’t realise it at the time, but I made an incense cozy. I am pretty sure that’s a first . In any case, it looks rather sweet in that shade of duck-egg blue. It sure has smartened up the Mason jar.

Ken is such a wonderful caring friend – he kept a string bowl I crocheted for him a couple of Christmases ago. In fact, he even kept the little tag I put on it. It now sits at his bedside holding handy things like lip balm, so a little part of me is there with him every night, even though we now live more than 3000 miles apart.

I made it from cotton postal string – the kind you tie around parcels – so I reckon it will last for a while as that stuff is pretty durable. I love the slight texture you get with that string: little flecks of brown & black from the cotton seeds. I think it really gives the bowl a rustic charm. The pattern for this bowl is adapted from one in Erika Knight’s book Simple Crochet.

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Last November when I went to visit my family in Japan, I had a hard time withholding from buying every single craft book in the country. I really did. All the books I looked at were AMAZING, and the patterns were for things that were either sooooo cute (kawaii!) or just plain practical and wearable. So needless to say I came home with half a suitcase full of yarn, books and accessories – adorable handles for handbags and whatnot. Lots of whatnot.

By far my favourite book has to be the rather wonderfully titled ‘Happy Small Goods of Crochet’, in which I really want to make every single thing. From slippers to shawls to bowls, book covers, bags, hats and loads more. The really col thing is that Japanese crochet patterns are pictorial rather than written out in sentences, so as long as you know what the stitches look like when drawn, you can follow the patterns… although being able to read hiragana/katakana does come in handy.

My first project from the book I started while I was there, using a Japanese yarn which is also wonderfully titled: it’s called James Dean. What this rebel without a cause had to do with wool is beyond me, but he looks good on a label regardless. Here’s the finished result:

When I get a chance, I think I will line it with the denim bits I had leftover from  making the crochet bowl from jeans. Since I didn’t use the ‘bum’ from the jeans, I think I can sew those ‘cheeks’ together to make a liner for the bag that incorporates the back pockets for handy storage. Sweet.

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Every so often, my girlfriends have a clearout of our closets and we have a Girlie Swap Shop: we all bring the clothes we don’t want – along with some cake and booze – to one of our houses and we have a good old rummage around to see if we can find any treasure in each other’s cast-offs. At the last one, I was going to take a pair of jeans I never wore much, but upon closer inspection, they had a small hole in the knee. I was secretly excited, actually: I knew they could be recycled into something fabulous.

So when it was my friend Jane’s birthday, I whipped out a mega huge crochet hook, some scissors, and made this groovy denim bowl out of the legs of those jeans. I just cut lengthways back & forth almost to the edge, resulting in a long strip that I crocheted in the round to make the bowl. I increased/decreased on each row to shape the bowl.

I think it looks pretty cool. When I gave it to Jane I filled it with some sachets of homemade bath salts, and I reckon it was a pretty darn good gift.

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It’s Christmas time so I thought I would make something special for my friends who were coming for Christmas dinner. What better way to celebrate than with a yule log from Nigella? It’s my first attempt at such a cake, and I have to say I was very pleased with the result.

(excuse the horrible photo, but it was taken with my iPhone – rubbish!)

I decided to add some sparkle by scattering a few gold glittery leaves around the rather realistic-looking log. And damn it tasted good. That Nigella knows how to bake a thing or two. Everything I have ever made from her How To Be a Domestic Goddess book has come out amazing.

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I think my yarn addiction has reached an all-time low. Or an all-time high, depending on your perspective. I am beginning to think that I have more yarn in my closet than clothing. And I’m almost certain I have more balls of yarn than shoes… and I have a LOT of shoes.

This hasn’t been helped by the fact that I brought home almost half a huge suitcase full of yarn when I went to Japan in October/November. At first I thought I could limit things to stocking up on gorgeous Noro yarns, but no, I couldn’t help myself. In fact, I even borrowed my cousin’s bike just to make an expedition to the local craft shop in Maebashi to stock up on all sorts of crafty goodies. Not only did I come back with 2 bags full of yarn, but I also bought some cute craft kits for making slippers, handbags and money purses.

I also spent far more time than should be allowed trying to hunt down the best Tokyu Hands store in Tokyo, rather than going out sightseeing. Prioritisation problems? Moi? Never!

The best thing I brought back from my trip has to be the craft books and magazines, though. The Japanese attention to detail and the fairly-recent zakka trend means that bookshops in every town are laden with beautiful volumes covering everything from felting to making your own moisturiser. I picked up a couple of real gems, including a whole book dedicated to making corsages, and another one called Happy Small Goods of Crochet, in which I want to make pretty much every single thing. I hope I can find time between getting my web consulting business off to a flying start to make a few gifts for Christmas.

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So I’ve been inspired to get back in to crochet recently, perhaps because my life has been so hectic and crochet can be done so much more quickly than knitting. I picked up a copy of Stitch & Bitch Crochet: The Happy Hooker a while back, and ever since then, I’ve been doing bits of crochet here and there.

The real clincher for me switching to the hook has been the fact that you can no longer knit on airplanes anymore, due to the ludicrous security rules (oh come on, you can do more damage with a ballpoint pen than most knitting needles!). Anyway, I decided to take a few skeins of yarn and some crochet hooks with me on my recent trip to Japan, to try and whip out a project or two during my travels.

Here’s a crochet scarf I made one night when my insomnia struck again. I think this took me an hour or two, crochet by the light of a headtorch while my hubby snoozed away. I made it using some super chunky chartreuse yarn in a wool blend. In fact it’s so chunky, it only took 3 rows of double crochet to make it! It’s a really long skinny scarf that looks rather fetching in shocking chartreuse, especially when paired with my favourite peacock blue overcoat. I have another skein of this yarn left, so I am thinking of making a beret or perhaps some wrist-warmers to go with the scarf. Yet another in my long list of future projects!

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Scarves are among the easiest things to knit, so they tend to be ubiquitous amongst knitters, especially as gifts. But this scarf is very different, very special, and one I will never forget knitting.

A few weeks ago my hubby and I got back from an an extended trip to Japan to celebrate our 10 year wedding anniversary, and to meet up with my Japanese family. It has been nearly 15 years since I was last in Japan, and my family there have never met my hubby, so that in itself was a momentous occasion. To me, the other big deal about this trip was that it may be the last time I get to see my 93 year old grandmother (obachan in Japanese). She is an amazing woman, and I can see where my mother gets her amazing-ness. I hope that even just a little bit of this wow-factor has trickled down into me.

I started knitting this scarf for my obachan before I left England, hoping to finish it during my travels around Japan before we headed to Beppu, where she lives. I ended up frantically knitting on the train to Beppu, getting motion sickness as a result, and only finishing moments before we disembarked. It was worth it, though.

You see, my obachan was a keen crafter when she was younger, and my mother has some fantastically detailed amigurumi (little crocheted animals) that she made. I hope these will be passed down to me, just like the skill of crochet, which went from my obachan, to my mother, to me. My obachan also made all of her children’s clothes, when the family were forced out of Manchuria during the occupation in WWII. They had nothing but rags, yet my obachan made do, and managed to instill in all of the children an incredibly positive outlook on life that pervades the family to this day. The ability to make something from nothing was also passed down to my mother, and I like to think a little bit has rubbed off on me, too.

But I digress: back to the scarf. Because she has such an appreciation of handicrafts, my obachan was thrilled to receive the scarf. It didn’t matter that she speaks no English and my Japanese is pretty awful: we could both tell that the gift was something much more than just a little bit of fabric to wrap around your neck. It was something that transcends generations, cultures and time, and brought two people closer together.

She also loved it for other, more simple reasons: the colour is her favourite (which I had no idea), it was done in a stitch that she hadn’t learned herself (seed / moss stitch), and she was really intrigued by the keyhole, which she had never seen before. Overall, a resounding success, that made me want to knit even more. I only hope I get the chance to give her another gift made from my hands someday.

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My fantabulous friend Digger brought me some knitting magazines from her trip to Australia, and this is the second project I’ve finished using patterns from those mags. As usual, I couldn’t resist changing things up a bit so instead of using super-fine mohair for this shawl, I used a beautiful Noro Blossom yarn, which made it more durable and warm.

I love Noro yarn, and had purchased a load of this particular colourway, even without knowing what I would make with it. I think the self-striping effect looks pretty cool on this shawl, and the variegated colours mean it goes with most outfits.

The coolest part about this project is how quickly it knits up, because you use ginormous knitting needles and the holes are made by purposely dropping stitches. The result is like a really stretchy net, so I can imagine using this technique for something like a toy ‘hammock’… I used to have one hanging over my bed when I was a kid, filled with soft plush toys. I guess you could also make a handy string bag using the same approach. Or – God forbid – a string vest (aka fishnet tank top, for you American readers!)

Although it’s supposed to be a summer wrap, I think you can wear this pretty much year-round, either as a wrap or around your neck as a scarf. Here it is worn as a scarf, which I must say is very warm indeed.

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Although I think I do a pretty good job of documenting my work-related projects, I have made a lot of things in my crafting life that I foolishly neglected to document. My mother sent me some photos of the gazebo and closed porch she is building, which has reminded me to always take pictures of my projects from now on. I will never again get to see the lovely alpaca scarf I knitted for my hubby, because he lost it shortly after I gave it to him last winter . And then there are all those scarves, hats, soaps, body creams, bowls and assorted other things I have made as presents for friends over the years. I really regret not having the foresight to take pictures of them.

So I decided to go back in time and take a photo of my very first knitting project, which I still have. It’s now well-worn, with little fluffy bits all over, and it looks quite amateur-ish when I look at it. But here it is: a duck-egg blue & chocolate brown stripy scarf. It’s a basic garter stitch pattern from Stitch & Bitch, adapted with stripes. In the photo it’s sitting on my lovely wool coat that is an amazing peacock blue colour… shame the colours didn’t come out too well because it looks navy rather than teal.

Aside: My mother is an incredible woman. She has always been my inspiration. We have crafted together a lot over the years, from oil paintings to ceramics, to silk-flower making and all sorts of other projects. I really wish I had photos of some of the things we made together when I was growing up. My mother’s latest love is woodworking, and at 67 years old, she’s pretty hard core to be building giant covered porches all on her own. She ROCKS!

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My hubby asked me to make a tea cosy, but we both wanted something modern rather than something frilly or granny-ish. We have a minimal white teapot with a kind of Japanese-inspired shape, so I thought I would find some masculine yarn in neutral colours to make a thick warm cosy to fit it.

I chose a dark chocolate brown superchunky cotton yarn that has strands of white and grey satiny ribbon running through it, and here’s the result. I didn’t follow a pattern, I just made it up as I went along, and I am pleased with the results. I have a whole ball of the yarn left, so I’d like to make a matching tray liner (dare I say modern ‘doily’?) or some coasters for the teacups.

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