Friday, October 30, 2009

29.10.09 Crochet & Wire Ring Workshop with Ronit-Tal

About 2.5 years ago, I attended my first workshop in my Israeli Beading commune. The workshop was about doing a cabochon with crochet and wire. It was said that a basic skill in crochet was required and for some reason I thought that for me it wouldn't be such a big deal. That happened to be a very wrong thinking and the workshop ended up as very frustrating to me because I finished it with nothing. Only at the very end of it, a very nice woman, pilpelet64, teached me kindly how to make a chain and this was the sole lesson I learnt from that workshop. In fact, I didn't know crochet at that time and as you can imagine, crochet with wire is even more chalenging...
Recently, a workshop on crochet with wire was published in my commune and I thought that could be a good occasion to try again. Unfortunately, when I wanted to subscribe, the workshop was already full, but I was lucky enough to get a place because of some cancellations.

Ronit-Tal invited us very kindly, she teached us an interesting technique of embellishing with the beads only at the end of the work, as if sewing them with an extra thread of wire. Otherwise you make a chain that encircles your finger, several rows of DC and hide the thread by coiling it between the first chain row, pulling and trimming. Last step is squashing the work. You can work flat and then connect it or work circular (the best size of crochet hook is 1mm or 1.5mm).
Finally, the atmosphere was great. I really enjoyed the company, food and also the crocheting with wire. As I told Ronit-Tal, this workshop was indeed a corrective experience to me.

n.b.
Today we had the first real Rain of this year, 1 hour of deluge and then sun all day :-) That was really "cool" ;-)

3 comments:

Unknown said...

That is kinda cool! I would love to do something like this with tatting, but so far the wire tatting I've seen looks the equivalent of a child's scribble, LOL!

Matilde said...

Congratulations on the beautiful crocheted ring!!
I also do crocheted wire bijou, and I am interested in learn more about this tecnique.....can you lead me to some page o place online where they show more of that?
Thank you!
Matilde
http://misagujas.blogspot.com

judith27k said...

TattingChic - I agree that is a real challenge to do tatting with wire, but maybe it is worth trying with a very thin wire thread and avoiding knots and tying in the work. Otherwise, you may try with a golden thread which imitates metal, but it is of course not the same.
As you can see my ring too looks like's a child scribble, but this mess has its charm ;-)

Matilde,thank you. I don't know of any special page about this technique online, though it might exists. I can only tell that you can start crochet normally, leaving 6'-10' of wire in the beginning of the work. This thread will serve in the end of the work to go through the wire randomly, or in the "ugly" places and adorn them with beads or anything you can think of ( it's quiet a freeform technique with no strict rules), by sewing it, not too strong, passing by and then ending the thread by inserting each of one of the eyes of the 1st or last row and coiling it from eye to the next eye, as if sewing around the first/last row. The same is done with the ending thread so to hide it, but you need to pull the thread a bit so it fits the circumference. Since the work is done with metal, there is a lot of room to play with the shape and accomodate it the way you like it. You can start with a simple linear form and with the help of molding it with your hands, curve it the way you like it. At the hand smash the work and it will keep the shape.

Maybe you can find some interest in tose youtubes movies about the subject - but not this specific way of doing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcDCaEG4Q3M&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_sabskf3T8