Is That A Rock Cozy?

As you may well remember, I relatively recently rediscovered my love of crochet – remember the Angry Birds Hat? Flower Power? Poko? Although, while making these projects, I also rediscovered that I was lacking some important knowledge – that being, what the names of stitches actually were, how to read a pattern, how to follow a pattern, etc. And so. When I came across this book in Michael’s (craft store) a few months back, I knew I just had to pick it up.

Beyond The Square: Crochet Motifs by the talented Edie Eckman. You can visit her at edieeckman.com.

It’s wonderful!!! Lots of big, shiny photos. A glossary of names and terms. Instructions in both visual and textual forms. PERFECTION! I can’t recommend it highly enough. Anyhow. I slowly worked my way through the “Workshop” section, familiarizing myself with the “how to’s” of crochet, and then I tackled some of the motifs I liked using some cotton yarn ends I just had kicking around.

Woohoo! Look at me go! In no time at all (okay-okay, the actual time between purchasing the book, reading the book, and practicing my skills was actually several weeks in length, but overall it wasn’t so long) I became comfortable with my new skills and felt ready to tackle something new. Namely, this.

Behold the gorgeous creations of Margaret Oomen, a rural physician and textile artist from Ontario that I happened to discover via one of my “inspirational” links. You can find her work (both the crochetted stones and the photographs she takes of them) in her Etsy store, knitalatte. I totally fell in love with the multicoloured crochetted stone, but just couldn’t bring myself to spend $150 on it. So, I took it as a kind of challenge instead.

I went out and got some thin crochet thread and a teeny hook and tried a new motif. It ended up being a lot bulkier and larger than I had anticipated. Hmm. Well, maybe I should try to separate some strands of embroidery floss and use only a few of them instead? So I gave that a try (I’ll put up a whole post on how to do that tomorrow, for all those DIY-ers out there…) and this is what it looked like.

As you can see, it was finer – lacier even – and I was pretty satisfied. Next, I tried using some different colours in the motif. (I still can’t believe how tiny the work is! If I keep up with it, I may need to get glasses again…)

When I was done, I went out and found a nice rock in the alley, stitched the two pieces together, and voila – my version of the “rock cozy” was done.

Front…

And back.

Just for fun, I grabbed a couple of my beach treasures and made a quick-and-dirty collective…

Not too shabby, huh? Maybe when I have more time, I’ll do some more experimenting – and put a little more effort into my photography… but for now, I’m pretty happy with my new windowsill decoration. Maragret’s stone that I really like has pieces of embroidered cloth stitched in, which will be yet another challenge, but I’m sure I’ll figure out something. Yay, me! Sometimes, I surprise even myself. =)

P.S. I Googled “crochet rock covers” and found this tutorial in case you’d like to try to make one for yourself. Yippie! I love the interwebs.