CrochetMania and Jar Toppers

 Hi! For a long time, I had this blog deactivated. I am now starting this blog all over again after five years of silence. Now I'm back, I'd like to write about one of my favourite activities ever: crochet.

I learned the basics of crochet while I was at school. Back then, I didn't really know all of the things that were possible to make with a crochet hook. Amigurumi and the stuff I now enjoy making were not popular, and apparently, everybody only worked with white cotton... sooo boring! lol This was the late 1990's 😅

My teacher at school only taught us old-fashioned crochet 👵, this is why I only learned to make dollies and cushion covers made out of two huge granny squares.  I was good at the craft, but during those years, I was mostly focused on playing the guitar, so I didn't take crochet seriously. After I graduated, I kept focused on uni 🎓 and that sort of stuff so I was crochet-inactive for more than 20 years!! In early 2017, I remembered I was good at crochet, and I decided to make wool socks for winter. By watching different tutorials on YouTube, I realised how many different colourful projects were now available, and since then, I have never stopped crocheting.

I have to mention my mother tongue is not English but in this second stage of my crochet journey I started watching crochet tutorials on YouTube in English, so I actually learned modern crochet in my second language 😅

One thing I was not aware of was the difference between crochet US terms and crochet UK terms. I had no knowledge then about that. The funny thing here is that even though I use British English spelling when writing, I learned to crochet in US terms and I had no idea about it! I thought crochet terms were the same everywhere.

I remember I was watching a tutorial by some British lady about how to make a flat circle and whenever she said "double crochet" I pictured an American double crochet in my mind, but she actually referred to British double crochet which is an American single crochet, in other words, a completely different stitch than the one I was picturing... a little bit confusing when you're a beginner... 😰

The thing is, this lady was doing a tutorial with British terms, but I followed the tutorial by making the piece using American terms, so my circle turned out to be different from hers, lol. And I really needed to learn quickly because I wanted to crochet jar toppers as last-minute gifts for 2017 Christmas and I think it was November 2017 lol 😆

Fortunately, even though I made a different stitch, my items turned out ok, considering I had not grabbed my crochet hook for over 20 years. I made jar toppers inspired in Elmo and Cookie Monster and filled one of the jars with black tea leaves and the other one with biscuits.

These were the very first 2 jar toppers I made.
They are inspired in Elmo and Cookie Monster.

After a while, someone liked my jar toppers so much that he asked me to make more. Unfortunately, I did not write the step-by-step instructions for the first set of jar toppers I made.

Orko, Top Cat, Yogi the Bear, Oskar

Juan Carlos Bodoque, Doraemon, Kermit the Frog

Mojojojo, P-chan, Taz

Oddie, Ernie, Bert, Blue Meanie

Smurf, Pink Panther

Around 2020, I was asked to make even more jar toppers, and just then, I realised how relevant it was to write a pattern for these because I wanted to make more Smurfs, but I did not remember the exact number of stitches and shape I did for the first Smurf's hat. Despite that, I made 2 more Smurfs but their hats were different than the first one.

This was how that kitchen looked after the first stage of the project.

And this is the final result with all of the jar toppers I made.

I know I have random pictures of some of the steps I followed when I was making these jar toppers. Maybe someday I share a few of those. And definitely, I will be sharing pictures of more projects and some other things as well. This will not be an exclusive crochet blog.