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I had my last class of Kids Crochet today–some of the girls brought flowers, it was so nice! We had a fun last class finishing up old projects and learning to crochet in the round by making hair scrunchies.


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On Monday, Kathleen Greco sent me a big box of Jelly Yarn. It is stretchy vinyl yarn comes in two gauges and bright, bright colors. On Tuesday, I brought it to the Savory knitting group where it got lots of ooohs and ahs. One knitter recommended I see a documentary called Blue Vinyl which tells how vinyl is made.


Jelly Swatches

I made some mini swatches to experiment with it a bit. Kathleen said that metal hooks work best… The largest metal hook I have is an N–that turned out to be too small for the chunky yarn. On the finer weight one, it worked great. The yarn seems to “prefer” a more open work stitch–double crochets looked much nicer than single crochet, trebles seemed even nicer–the yarn seems to like to have room to stretch and move around.


Jelly Yarn Beach Bag

Kathleen also sent a sample of a beach bag (or market bag) crocheted with the yarn–it is quite stretchy and uses one of the translucent colors. It’s done in a mesh stitch–which is a good idea, because chaining is easier than the more complicated stitches with this yarn.


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I’ve been trying to imagine suitable uses for the yarn–Kathleen has patterns for bags and embellishments for shoes. It’s a great yarn for kids–because they love the textures and the colors are so bright–and while it is challenging to work with, most of the kids muddled through because they thought it was cool stuff. At class today, we made necklaces and bracelets out of it–we also made some hair scrunchies. I think a crocheted belt could be cool. One of my students–Ben–said it would make a great crocheted Jelly Fish!

Oh–one other point–Kathleen recommended lubricating the hooks with Armor-all. I couldn’t stand the thought of having that stuff on my hands, so we just put some vegetable oil on a paper towel, and greased the hooks that way. The hooks then slid without resistance. We found that even the plastic hooks worked just fine once we lubricated them. the yarn is slippery, even without grease–so securing the ends could be an issue–I suppose one could melt them a wee bit with a match.

I’m interested to hear if anyone has crocheted with this yarn, and what they’ve made. I feel like it will really appeal to the folks who love to crochet with anything from spaghetti to apple peelings (you know who you are. Oh, and I tried the apple peelings once, with little success.)

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Jelly Kids Crochet