On my local fibercraft blog we’re having a craft challenge a la Iron Chef: craft something inspired by or about fiddleheads, the young fern coils that New Englanders like to eat around this time of year. More details and where you should comment with your project are here, and I would love it if you wanted to participate — whether or not you’re local and whether or not you would be working in fiber, in fact. It would actually be a big favor, helping populate this challenge.
I started working on fiddlehead-themed crochet last night, and I must say, my blogging partner picked a tricky challenge theme. With all sorts of spirals on my mind, my first attempt was a two-strand spiral beginning with single crochet into a magic ring (with strand A, let’s say) and then alternating between slip stitch into back loop only with strand B and single crochet with strand A into the front loops of the slip stitches. The single crochet gradually grew to half double and then double. The result, which looks more like a seashell than a fiddlehead, is the first picture below.
The second picture above is my second attempt, a strip of foundation sc (then fhdc, then fdc) that I then coiled up and sewed into a spiral. To me, this one evokes seashells even more than the previous one.
The commas below are my third attempt. Chain 2 and make 6 sc into the second chain from the hook. Increase around in back loops only, except the last (12th) stitch of this round was an extended sc that led into about a dozen foundation sc. Here and in the second coil I made sure *not* to pull the linking loop of the fsc out very far, so the strip would naturally curl toward the bases of the stitches.
The last picture is of a mess. I chained for a while, then I slip stitched into a chain a little ways from the hook, and alternated ch 2 and sl st into somewhere further around the ring for a while. When I was only a few chain-lengths away from the previous linkage to the starting chain I slip stitched into it again, and went back into the ch-2/sl st pattern. Ultimately I think this is best described as a coil of ch-2/sl st going counter-clockwise on top, and a coil of a periodically-secured starting chain going clockwise on the bottom. It was an experiment.
The challenge goes until the end of the month and this won’t be my last attempt, but I’m going to change media for my next effort.