What's In My Crochet Bag - Bookmark Edition

Last night, I did something amazing. Something revolutionary. Something totally unexpected and furthermore astounding. Are you ready? I sewed on a button.

Not just any button, though. The button for Suze's gift for last year's craft meme. That's right! I have finally completed and shipped all, count them ALL of my craft meme gifts that were supposed to be completed and shipped by last December. I am the awesome.

I know, I know. No applause needed.

In the meantime, I have been working on a veritable plethora of crochet projects and can't wait to finish one and show you my brand new energy and amazingness. (Am I painting it on a bit thick yet? No? Good.) But, in the meantime, I'm a little low on finished projects. I fully intend to post the fabulousness of Suze's gifts next week, but I want to give them time to get to her. (By the way, Suze, if you don't get your gift this week, send me a holler so I won't post and ruin the surprise, kay?)

Last night, I was trying to think of some sort of discussion to start or thing to ramble about, since I have no finished projects and I pulled out the gifty with the missing button to finish it up and found a bookmark.

I really love to crochet bookmarks and I've been doing it for some time. Typically, I do them in thread and they are sort of useful doilies. All about the pretty. Every year for Christmas, my bookclub does a white elephant exchange, which is hilarious. But, we also tend to bring little whatsit type gifts for everyone. Last year, while I was in the hospital recovering from a c-section, I did scarves for everyone. And then made sure they understood that this was a one time gig. Scarves are a little more time than I was willing to donate on a yearly basis.

So, this past year, I decided to do bookmarks. I have a book of nothing but thread crochet bookmark patters (yes, a little overkill, I'll admit) and I went through it with post it notes in hand, "Perfect for G!" "For M, maybe?" and "Would this be masculine enough for GH if it wasn't pink?" littered the pages. I finally chose a pattern for everyone, made a list of threads that I needed to buy and then, well, then I promptly forgot about the whole project. So, I found myself, days before the meeting in full panic mode. Some very complicated thread crochet patterns in one hand and well, nothing in the other because I never bought the stupid thread.

So, this is what I did.
Cute, huh?

Yeah, I was impressed.

(Oh, and yes, yes that is a thesaurus of which my bookmark is marking the page. No, I am not reading a thesaurus. I actually forgot to take a picture and brought the bookmark to work and it was either this or a very boring book on farm easements.)

I did this with the amazing bright green Kool-Aid dyed yarn that Suze sent me last year. So, you can't have any, no matter where you look, but it is sock weight and I'm thinking wool. Any type of yarn would really work, though, so long as it is a lighter weight. You could also do this with thread or cotton.

As for pattern, I can't help you there, either, because I didn't use one. I basically chained however many stitches I wanted and then single crocheted back down the row. I used a small hook (like maybe a C or D) and then ran the ends through a bead and built a tassel on the thread ends. Note: You will want big beads and ones with big holes in the middle, otherwise you will have dinky sad little tassels.

(Also note, this is not a utilitarian bookmark. This is all about the showy. If you try to close a book on this monster, you will break the spine. You could very easily do a much longer cord and have something where the bead could hang out the bottom. It's up to you and what you hope to accomplish. This bookmark could probably be used the same way in a paperback, now that I think about it, just not in a big book. End: Warning that you could have figured out on your own anyway.)

Every one is a little different because I used different beads and I sort of tweaked how I was doing it with each one. I tried to do one with two rows, one in the front loop only and one in the back loop only. This gave me a really cool triangular shape to the bookmark, but also made it sort of twisty. I probably could have fixed that with blocking, but I would rather it just work.

Basically, it's a trial and error kind of thing. Hope you like it!