Image provided by Rania Hassan.

The Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef exhibit recently opened at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC. It’s an absolutely beautiful handmade display that raises awareness of the endangered ecosystems of coral reefs around the world.

In addition to this exhibit, the Smithsonian Community Reef — the latest satellite of the global Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef project — also is on display until April 24. More photos of the project can be viewed on this Flickr group.

My favorite part of this project is that contributions to the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef project were encouraged to submitted from all around the world. A Ravelry group for the project enabled a fun crochet along and encouraged many to post pictures of their progress.

Furthermore the fact that models of hyperbolic space can be created using crochet is mind blowing. There’s a fun interview about crocheting the hyperbolic plane on The Institute For Figuring Web site.

Dudes of Craft is the Hello Craft series from Keli Anaya exploring the mysterious world of men who craft.

This week, I present a profile for one of Crafty Bastards‘ demonstrators, DC Men Knit.

These guys are really awesome, no joke. I went to one of their get togethers and fit right in.  Some were crocheting and some were knitting, some were spinning fibers.  Gene Throwe, the group’s organizer was working on a crocheted jock strap pouch. Yeah, awesome! Others were working on a crocheted plastic coral reef to go up at the Smithsonian.  A few were spinning fibers into yarn. DIY to the extreme.

Gene hosts these events a few times a month at different places in DC and Virginia. They work in all different media and materials, so bring your crochet hooks, your knitting needles and any other materials.  Seriously, this group of dudes (and sometimes women) are way cool and passionate about crafting.

DC Men Knit will be at the Crafty Bastards Demo table starting at 4 PM next Saturday, October 2.  They will be showing how to knit and how to crochet a variety of different things, from granny squares to jock strap pouches. Well have yarn, hooks, and needles for you to use to learn, too. Get ready for a whole group of dudes who craft!

Happy Friday everyone!

Today’s post is the second installment on the basics of crocheting. Just like last time, you will need a crochet hook and some yarn, string, or twine.

Here are a few links:

1. This is a great site that gives you a run down of the basic stitches. Note, the ‘one and a half stitch’ that I reference in the video is actually called a half double crochet. The abbreviations for the stitches are listed, too which are used in patterns. (By the way, Quintuple stitch!)

2. This next site is near and dear to my heart and not just because of that sweet roses gif. I reference this site far more than I care to admit, but it is a comprehensive list of intricate stitches.

3. Here are a couple of my favorite stitches.
Afghan or Tunisian Stitch (This one requires a specialized hook, but look how pretty it is!)
Popcorn Stitch
Granny Square

4. Here is a video from a man who makes some incredible work. Check out all of his videos for an inspirational romp with crocheting.

For this week’s column, I wanted to share something really special so I made a movie. In this video I teach you how to Chaos Stitch. You will need a couple of things before you begin: yarn/twine/string and a crochet hook.

Sit back and enjoy!

A few tips:

1. Crocheting is basically building stitches on top of the previous stitches. For example, if you want a square you would start crocheting on your beginning chain from right to left. At the end of the chain, you would move up a row to start crocheting from left to right. This will make more sense next week.

2, A thicker crochet hook will produce a bigger, looser crochet. A thinner hook will make a smaller, tighter product.

3. Enjoy the act of making something! This is just an introduction into the basics of crochet, so just have fun.

Last week I attended a lecture of the artist Orly Genger, I had not known of Orly’s work before but went after I saw her work online. She was a very petite young women who was surprisingly blase in talking about her art and practices.  I found this both humorous and charming since her work is giant and comes out of the minimal aesthetic and she was speaking in front of about 75 mostly 50+ women.  They wanted clear cut answers and Orly like many young artists, including myself, just don’t.  I really enjoyed how Orly’s process has just evolved and her creation of works is not overly planned or planned at all initially, allowing for the process to guide the work.  Yet, the result is impressive in both scale and ambition.

Orly hand crochets heavy ropes, often mountain climbing rope, into VERY large scale installations reminding us of color field paintings, miminalist sculpture, and what is generally associated with a very “male” period in art history. Orly creates work that stands alongside and often outshines the renowned work of the past.

A  perfect description from the Aldrich Contemporary Art museum:

Genger transforms knitting’s intimate, homespun aesthetic into large-scale works that relate more to post-Minimal sculpture and the color fields of late modernist painting than to craft projects. Her technique, which dispenses with needles altogether, deliberately narrows the distance between original idea and final object. Genger weaves thick strands of rope, elastic strapping, yarn, and metallic ribbon with only her fingers; the resultant objects are indexical traces of her unique process and directly convey the painstaking labor that goes into their creation.

I admit that this work is not generally my aesthetic but the shear size is so inspiring.  To take craft so outside of its fragile materials and to create large scale outdoor sculptures that can withstand both weather and the public- that is something I would love to see more of. To see a very cool video of her work in action check this out.

And Orly does not stop there she is now collaborating with jeweler Jaclyn Mayer to create some truly lovely crochet rope necklaces.  They would create a goddess out of all of us.

Each week, the Hello Craft Podcast collects stories of making and buying handmade.

This week, Morgan of MamaSassDesigns learns to crochet.

Click here to download the episode (right-click and choose “save as” on PC, or control-click and choose “save as” on Mac)

This week, Mara Bradford gets creative with a gift for Uncle Bill. Check out Mara’s colorful world of crochet, here.

Click here to download the episode (right-click and choose “save as” on PC, or control-click and choose “save as” on Mac)

Uncle Bill opening his gift:

Close up crocheted Rainbow Trout:

Learn how to contribute to the podcast!