Crochet Sculpture in a Bowl

Whenever I go to an art fair I’m drawn to the booths with pottery and ceramics.  Sometimes I can’t resist buying a piece or two.  Here is a bowl that jumped off the shelf at me because of the color combo, even though I didn’t have a purpose in mind for it at the time.  The same thing happens whenever I go to the yarn store, resulting in an ever-growing stash of skeins.  One day I got an idea for a hyperbolic crochet experiment and went searching through the stash for a 100% acrylic worsted weight yarn.  I prefer to work with natural fibers, but when doing crochet sculptures acrylic yarn tends to hold a stiffer shape.  This skein of Bernat Mosaic “Optimistic caught my eye and I decided to use the pottery bowl to hold the ball of yarn while I worked, to keep it from rolling all over the place.  That’s when I noticed the yarn and the bowl had similar color schemes that coordinated well together.

As I worked, I wondered what it might look like to display the hyperbolic sculpture in the bowl when finished.  Here’s the answer:

Completed hyperbolic crochet rope sculpture and ceramic display bowl

Rope sculpture arranged in the bowl

I love the contrast of the soft fuzzy yarn with the hard smooth bowl

The colors are similar to another hyperbolic crochet project I made and posted about here: Hyperbolic Freeform Sculpture Tutorial

The one on the left is made with Bernat Mosaic Yarn “Optimistic”. The one on the right is made with the Deborah Norville Yarn “Northern Lights”.

For this project I used a size G hook with worsted weight yarn.  I tend to use a smaller hook than usual for hyperbolic crochet as it helps create a firmer structure.  Here are the instructions, in U.S. crochet terms:

ROW 1: I started by crocheting 9 chains (8 chains + 1 turning chain).

ROW 2: Single crochet (sc)  in second chain from hook and in each chain to the end.  8 sc made. Chain 1 and turn.

ROW 3: Make 2 sc in each sc.  16 sc made. Chain 1 and turn.

ROW 4: Make 2 sc in each sc. 32 sc made.  Chain 1 and turn.

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This completes the first “node” of the rope sculpture.  You’ll see it curls up into a spiral swirl.

*ROW 5: Single crochet in first 8 sc in row below.  Chain 1 and turn.

ROW 6: Repeat rows 3 and 4. *

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Second node completed. For each additional node you want to make, repeat instructions from * to *.

Here’s what it looks like after about 5 spirals are made:

Here is what it looked like after the first 5 nodes were made

Progress after 10 nodes made

If you want the nodes to be less curly, increase less often.  For example, increase only in every other stitch or in every third stitch.  You can also make the nodes longer and more “twisty” by making more rows before starting the next node. Another experiment that can be tried  is to start with either more or less chains for the first row.  What would it look like if you started with only 4 chains?  With 20 chains?

To make extra curly long spirals, I did the following variation for the last 6 nodes of this sculpture by doing the following:

Extra tight spirals for the last nodes of the sculpture

VARIATION:

At end of last node regular node, (row 4) don’t proceed to row 5 of the instructions.  Instead,  **chain 13 and turn.

2 sc in second chain from hook.  2sc in each chain across. 24 sc completed. Chain 1 and turn

2 sc in each sc across. 48 done.**

Time for the next extra-curly spiral node.  Repeat from ** to **.

Completed sculpture

Completed Hyperbolic Crochet Sculpture in Ceramic Bowl

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Your turn! If anyone experiments with making one of these crocheted sculptures, I’d love to see pictures and any variations you create. 🙂

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