I’m pretty sure that I just took my crochet skills to a whole new level this past launch when I released my very first pattern (the Luminarie Cozy and Hanging Planter Pattern) as part of Knit Picks, for free! I can’t tell you how excited I am to share what I’ve been tinkering with since we got our first samples of our new Curio crochet thread in the office.

I’ve been oggling jar covers on Pinterest since I created my account but never wanted to make a set out of something as heavy and wooly as Palette, and none of our lace yarns seemed quite sturdy enough for the job of bearing the weight of a plant. In stepped Curio just about the same time summer truly got started here in Portland and I seriously starting to pine for something cute to work on. Curio has the perfect combination of sturdiness, stitch definition, extraordinarily lovely palette and dainty thread weight for this sort of project.

I chose the ever-classic Natural color and picked up my 1.5 mm steel crochet hook and started playing around with different stitches.

Some of the very first images that really caught my eye were jar cozies with candles inside. I LOVED how the light shines through the fabric and casts beautiful lacy shadows on the table top. A simple sleeve that fits snugly over a jar seemed like the perfect place to start. I found a fairly solid stitch pattern that I thought would hold it’s shape, stay situated on the jar right where I wanted it while still allow enough of that romantic candlelight to shine through.

Isn’t that lovely? And it’s so easy. I decided to crochet it flat, working back and forth until I had just the right length to wrap around the jar. That way I wouldn’t have to worry about twisted foundation chains and I could just stitch the ends together for a quick finish.

The second pattern was a bit of a challenge because I needed to find some way of making a base to support a jar with a plant inside so that I could hang it in a window. It couldn’t be too open, or the whole shebang would sag, but it still needed to have a touch of delicacy about it.

I settled on a simple round motif for the bottom that transitions into a simple two-row repeat in the round for the sides. My favorite part about both projects is that if you’re familiar and comfortable basic crochet techniques, you can whip both of these up in a day and have PLENTY of thread left over to make many more.

I would love to crochet a few of these in gradated colors to line up down a table for a dinner party. Maybe Natural, Bluebell, Ciel and Navy? Oh, how those blues get me every time!