Small Projects: Sakura no Hana Saku (Sakura Blooming)

In between the long sessions of creating His and Hers scarves I've been spending my down time trying to create a good facsimile of a cherry blossom, or sakura, in crochet.

I took the base pattern from here, and have found that Marte's pattern works really rather well and very quickly. However, I couldn't resist tinkering with the steps to completing the project. Notes so far:

- I haven't yet mastered the magic adjustable ring, so I instead start with a foundation chain, 12 stitches long. I join it into a ring with a slip stitch to the first chain, then go on to make rounds one and two as normal.

- Pointy petal variation was accomplished by modifying round three as follows; see instructions in boldface: Chain 1, sc in same stitch. *skip 1 stitch, [3 dc, 1 tr, 3 dc] in next stitch, skip 1 stitch, sc in next stitch* repeat between * 4 more times, 5 petals total. Join to first sc, weave in ends.

- First sakura variation was accomplished by modifying round three as follows; see instructions in boldface: Chain 1, sc in same stitch. *skip 1 stitch, [2 dc, 1 tr, 1 hdc, 1 tr, 2 dc] in next stitch, skip 1 stitch, sc in next stitch* repeat between * 4 more times, 5 petals total. Join to first sc, weave in ends.


Here is a close-up of that first sakura variation. I'm not sure if the notch in the middle of each petal can be easily seen, though, so I'm thinking of doing another variation later, when I get home. Maybe I'll modify the 7 dc petal into [1 dc, 1 tr, 1 dc, 1 hdc, 1 dc, 1 tr, 1 dc] or something. Tried that, didn't work.


I sewed the first sakura variation onto a length of black ribbon and am wearing it today as a choker. See?



Whew, crochet is fun! Also, I never thought I'd be a designer of patterns myself, but the scarves and the upcoming projects might disagree with me.... :D