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  • Writer's pictureWendy Warman

Autumn crochet


Jolly pumpkins for Hallowe'en were the latest makes tackled by the Happy Hookers on Saturday. Who said they had to be orange? A number of other colours were pressed into service according to availability in various stashes. The most popular pumpkin was Bella Coco's ribbed double crochet version which built on the techniques used for August's easy beany hat. Diane and Michelle both found it quite hard to work into the back of the chain for the first row as shown in the video. Michelle persevered (slowly!) before the meeting and Diane was pleased to take Gill's advice to ignore Bella's instructions and start off in the usual way just like we'd done for the beany hat. After all, it would be hard to see the difference once the pumpkin was made up!


Both double knit wool (dk) and aran versions were made and Ann also tried using two dk colours together to make it into an aran weight result. It was interesting to see the difference in sizes between dk and aran when the same number of chains were used as the starting point.


The latest new technique tackled was making the ICord used to form the pumpkin's stem. This proved to be quite slow and tricky if stitches weren't to be lost and we'd defy anyone to make the much longer cord for cushion piping as suggested in the video!

This was the first thing we'd made which needed stuffing and in the absence of toy stuffing, old tights and the insides of pillows were pressed into service.


Bella Coco has instructions for a second pumpkin based on the amigurumi crochet technique which was tackled by Pauline and Michelle with varying results. Michelle found it vital to count every stitch as she went along as it can be quite easy to miss the last one in the round even with a row marker in place. Her version is in grey wool because she only had black tights available for stuffing and thought that might show through if she used a lighter colour wool!


Links used for this session - all are from Bella Coco:

  • Double crochet pumpkin video tutorial (this also links through to the ICord tutorial video) - note the length of the rectangle made is double the width, NOT three times as is said several times during the video (it is corrected in the accompanying text)

  • ICord video tutorial

  • Amigurumi pumpkin pattern (which links through to the video tutorial if needed)



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