Day 20 – Eucalyptus | Little Box of Crochet

Written by:

Posted on:

27th November 2019

I’ve been looking forward to this one – it has a CONSTRUCTION element to it (and by that I mean there’s a bit of wire involved)

I thought I couldn’t possibly ever love anything as much as the poppy heads (full disclosure, I’ve not made any of the fruit yet so it’s likely I’ll combust at that point) but love is fickle and here we are: I’m not able to think of anything but these eucalyptus stems and I imagine us running off into the sunset (well, me sort of lolloping and carrying some of these with me). They. Are. GORGEOUS.

Interesting that so many of the foliage bits and bobs start in the same way, with our good friend the magic loop. Now there’s a skill to have isn’t there? Who knew it could take us to the dizzy heights of eucalyptus leaves. If you haven’t mastered it yet, have a look here:

Magic Loop Technique

First tip: leave a tail long enough to grab hold of (you’ll need it later) and don’t crochet over the ends. No good for this fella.

First two rounds on all of the 3 sizes of leaves are no probs. Neither is the 3rd round OBVS (else I’d be laying on the floor crying) but I will give you a tip: Kate will tell you if you have to put more than one stitch into a stitch on this round. If there’s a comma after the stitch, move on, if she says “a dc and an htr” that means you put those 2 things into the next stitch. Does that make sense? Did I need to say that? Probably not. If you visualise your little leaf as quite flat at one edge and then bulging out and around, it will make following those stitches quite intuitive I think.

Right then, that last bit on each leaf, making the little indent: let’s have some photo help shall we?

When you’ve finished the round, poke your hook right through the middle where you started the leaf

Grab the yarn and pull back through the centre and through the loop on the hook…..

You’ve now got a yarn end at the front and one at the back.

Thread the end coming from the front onto your darning needle and pass that back through the centre to the back of the leaf again.

Tie a tight double knot with those ends and your leaf will do a little dip and fold and look DIVINE!

Oh so yeah here’s another thing, given you have tied those ends of so tightly, do you think there’s any issue with snipping them off close to the back rather than sewing them in? That’s what I’ve done. No one tell the crochet police ok??

A police spokesperson said earlier today “please stop calling this number”

At this point I should probably admit that I’m rather liking having a photo-heavy post so shall we continue in that vein? Shall we? We’ve got some wiring to do so we might as well. Come along then and feast your eyes on THIS: yes folks, it’s the most pointless and dull photo in the world ever. Enjoy it…..maybe get a cup of tea and a biscuit so you can ponder if for longer…..

What this is, is 3 bits of wire. That’s it. No point of reference or anything to show how big they are. Just wibbly wobbly wires. I cut my wire up into these roughly similar size bits. *tumbleweed blows past*

So to make the wire more exciting, I’ve bent one of the bits of it double. See?

Thread the small leaf on to the wire so the right side is facing upward and the ends of the wire are going through from top to bottom. I threaded it just in from the edge a bit.

And here’s the other one! Threaded on to the other “leg” of the wire.

twisty twisty twist that wire underneath a few times

When you’ve added the large leaves twist the wire all the way to the bottom

Ta dah! I totally and utterly love them .

I am genuinely concerned that I’ll be able to cope with all this gorgeousness in one place. *Thankfully, I’m gifting my finished wreath so i should be ok. Phew.

*and by “thankfully” I mean “what the actual heck was I thinking”