Crochet a Queensday ring

What’s more Dutch for Queensday than a king or queen crown? That’s why I decided to crochet a ring with a crown on-top. The ring itself is not too difficult, it’s placing the ring on-top without interruption the work that’s challenging. If you find that too difficult you can crochet the 2 as seperate pieces and sew them together afterwards.
Good luck!

What you need for this project:
some standard thin cotton SMC
crochet hook 2 and 3mm.
Choose your combination of yarn and needle so that your crochet will get really tight in order to make the crown stand-up.

Step 1: the ring
Use hook 3mm, chain 16-18-20, check the size of the ring around your finger. Switch to hook 2 and join the ring by sc into the first chain, make sure that the ring isn't turned.
sc into every chn. make 3 rounds.

Step 2: The Crown:
Here comes the tricky part. Take a look at the ring from the top and imagine the crown that you are going to " raise" on-top of the ring. This helps you understand that you will need to crochet in almost the opposite direction than the work of the ring is directed.
chain 1, now sc1 in a bump in the middle of the ring, this will be the left extremity of the imaginary circle/base of the crown, chn 1. You have now "crossed"  the width of the ring. sc2 in the chains that form the outer edge of the ring. chn 1, sc 1 in a bump int he middle of the ring, chn 1, sc 2 in the chains that form the opposite outer edge. This should form a neat circle of 10 loops.
sc into every chain and make 2 rounds.
Now the spikes. Check that you have 10 chains we will be making spikes in every 2nd chn, 5 spikes in total. sc in the 1st chain, chn 2, sc back into the first chain of the string, sc 1 back into the chain where you made the 1st sc. this forms the first spike. jump 1. sc into the next chain of the crown, chn 3, sc back into the 2nd and 1st chain of the string, sc back into the chain where you made the 2nd sc. jump 1. sc into the next chain of the crown, chn 4, sc back into the 3rd, 2nd and 1st chain of the string, sc back into the chain where you made the 3rd sc. jump 1. sc into the next chain of the crown, chn 3, sc back into the 2nd and 1st chain of the string, sc back into the chain where you made the 4th sc. jump 1. sc into the next chain of the crown, chn 2, sc back into the 1st chain of the string, sc back into the chain where you made the 5th sc. make 1 pull-stitch to close the loop, cut the thread and pull through.

step 3: finish and decorate
work away the 2 loose ends with a needle. Embroider sequins and beads to decorate.

Good luck! and please message me, if you make any yourself, would love to see it!

More news and variations on crochet Queensday rings tomorrow, so stay tuned!

Swapping crochet queensday rings

Today I met with Marina from by-wire.net. She was interested in some queensday rings. She choose 1 white ring, 2 orange, and a bleu, white, red striped and a bracelet. One of the orange rings and the bracelet she's going to give away to friends. We made a swap deal; in return i get 4 days worth of using time with the laser-cutter or 3d-printer in her studio. Plus perhaps some yarn from her stash and a beer if she can find me on queens-evening. I thought this was a very generous deal. She even wrote a slip of paper to seal the deal. 

I have made another swap with my colleague Julian who's setting up the FabLab in Tilburg (to open in September), he exchanged for a lovely 3D printed ring!



















My colleague swapped for some jewellery, actually meant to be embroidered to decorate the rings. But they are way to pretty for that.

and my colleague Kathelijn donated her yarn in exchange for 2 rings.

Crochet Queensday Ring

I'm ready for queensday! If the weather allows I will have a little booth where I will be selling these crochet queensday rings. Planning to publish the pattern next weekend, so stay tuned if you also want to crochet queensday rings.

make a "lace" perspex lasercut bracelet

About time that I get this one shared properly, not really like anything else that you have seen from the Knitbitch so far, but I also like to experiment with these new crafting techniques. A couple of years ago I joined the hypercraft masterclass in the Fablab (de Waag) in Amsterdam. I used a pattern that my hubby had developed for a completely different purpose, tried different materials, it turned out to work quite amazingly in clear perspex. This last trial was made at the Protospace in Utrecht.

For this project you will need some perspex, clear transparent makes for a more blingy, crystallized version, milky makes for a more romantic crochet like version.

Perspex;
10x25 cm, thickness 4mm

STEP 1
check out the settings of the laser-cutter and make a test. You need to get two settings right; one to cut and one to etch. Also the laser-cutter will be able to read particular colors, note these ones down in order to "code" your pattern in the right way.

STEP 2
Prepare your pattern.
Make your pattern as much as possible out of one HAIRline. I was a lazy pattern drawer so I had several layers of lines on-top of each-other and that doesn't make things easier.
I had prepared my pattern in Illustrator, but the laser-cutter at Protospace only reads CorelDraw files, so I had to convert the file, that is re-open the file in CorelDraw. That messes up the file, so I had to re color-code all my lines as intended for either cutting or etching. and as I had not made my drawing with one line but numerous overlayed lines, I had to catch them all and turn them into the right color.
If you can do this step smartly it can really save you a lot of time.

STEP 3
Cutting the bracelet.
upload the pattern to the laser-cutter.

I made 2 versions of the pattern, one with more and one with less perforations. and also tried a simple version with simple diamond shapes, actually because I wanted to embroider on it (which I have never done)
This is what it looked like when it came out of the cutter.

It turned out that my pattern has some breeches in the lines (all those overlayed lines) so the bracelets where not coming loose from the material. With a little bit of help of a handsaw and a polisher I got the piece detached in the end.

STEP 4
Bending the bracelet
With a sort of blow torch (huge creme brullee burner) I got the piece bent into the shape of a bracelet. With the help of the hubby. This was quite complicated. The punch-pattern makes the plexiglas heat up unevenly, and therefore it didn't bend in a homogeneous way and also the blow torch left some not so nice firemarks.

after the fact I got some feedback and kind advise on my Flickr uploads to try a 200 degree oven instead of a blow torch link. So I would say try that instead.

This is what the bracelet finally looked like.Next time I'm going to try fluorescent.

Here are some other trials I made.

milky transparent material. too small size which made the whole very frail and lots of pieces broke off.

Leather cuff version. I had high hopes for this one, but it really is not very nice.