Lei Crochet

I've never mentioned it on this blog because it happened a few years before I started writing it, but in my teens I asked my mother to teach me how to crochet, which she graciously did. My actual output never amounted to more than a doily and a couple of simple scarves, and I slowly petered out of doing it as I went through college, but I enjoyed doing it, and occasionally thought about taking it up again.

Around the time I stopped I put a book on my wishlist called “Hawaiian Lei in Crochet” by Roberta E. Wong (I think I had just moved or was about to move to Hawaii at the time and was interested in all kinds of island things). I'd pretty much forgotten all about it after a few years until it showed up at my door a few weeks ago, a birthday gift from my dear aunt Susan.

Having been thinking about taking up crochet again, a book full of neat but relatively simple pattterns was just the impetus I needed. I picked what looked like an easy recipe, went out and bought some hooks and yarn, and set to work. I found it to be a wonderful activity during long meetings at work – having something to occupy my hands with actually lets me pay more attention to the proceedings than otherwise.

Anyway, fast forward a few weeks, and I've just completed my first lei.

This particular lei is meant to imitate the ʻākulikuli flower, one I'm not personally familiar with (I chose it because it looked like a nice easy recipe to start out with, as indeed it proved). A little searching on my part reveals that there are multiple different plants in the Hawaiian isles with that name, with accordingly varied pictures available, but I found some pictures of lei that look pretty similar (if a bit more vividly pink).

Anyway, I'm pretty excited to have completed my first crochet project in several years, and one that looks so good to boot. I'm not entirely sure I followed all the instructions correctly, but I got something good-looking out of it so I'm happy. There are about twenty recipes in the book, many of which I'd like to try at some point, so I'll probably have some more pictures of crochet lei up eventually. A hui hou!