A place for crochet lovers to BE

Alternative Materials Crochet

Every so often I am inspired by alternative materials for my crochet, it might be the texture or the colour that sets my imagination off, I have often used polythene because of the sound it makes when handled. You might find it odd to be inspired by sound but my husband is a musician so sound is part of my daily equation.

Recently I went to a builders suppliers where I came across a spool of Manila Twine - I adore the scent of Manila and simply had to buy a few meters of the twine because of the scent alone.

Manila is coarse and not kind on the hands, it's firm and strong too. On the way home in the car I realized it might work well with the spool of cotton candlewick in my stash... The colours would complement each other nicely, I thought.

Crochet Manila Twine & Candlewick Basket
© Irene Lundgaard 2013

When home, I ended up making a small basket out of the twine and the candlewick. It was fun to make and I hope to be able to source some hemp twine, I'm quite sure it would be cool combined with some flax yarn.

Do you ever use alternative materials in your crochet?

Note: This basket is part of my "Living Crochet" workshop in which items for the home are designed and crochet. More here!

Tags: Crochet, Living, candlewick, cotton, crochet, manila, twine

2 members like this

CroPro Comment by Sara - momwithahook on January 21, 2013 at 5:18pm: Wow, I would not have thought of using polythene. Did you crochet around it? or did you hold it together with the candlewick?

Love the final piece and will check out your living crochet workshop.

CroPro Comment by Irene Lundgaard on January 21, 2013 at 5:37pm: Sara, there is no polythene involved in this bag only Manila twine and candlewick cotton.

Polythene is fun to work with, I have worked it on its own, never along with anything else but anything stringy goes as far as I am concerned.

Thanks for the "love"!

CroPro Comment by Sara - momwithahook on January 21, 2013 at 5:41pm: Must have read that too fast - polythene was at the beginning - manila twine was the material with the scent you adored. :)

CroPro Comment by Irene Lundgaard on January 21, 2013 at 5:46pm: No harm done! Both are fun to work with!

Member Comment by Madelyn (madwhimsy) on January 23, 2013 at 6:39am: No material is safe from me, if it's even vaguely string-like I'll crochet with it to see what happens. :)

CroPro Comment by Irene Lundgaard on January 23, 2013 at 2:57pm: Isn't crochet just magic Madelyn, the way you can crochet any sort of string - love that, so exciting. Laurie even crochet string cheese once, it wasn't an unconditional success, but it was crochet! ;-)

Comment