Starting Small

Huma Qureshi is an author I have recently discovered. In her latest 'Dear Huma' letter she reminded me of the importance of starting small, and nudged me to write this post.

Anything I start, whether it is crochet or a blog post, starts small, often with a nudge. The latest crochet project I have completed started with a nudge from my husband and used my knowledge of crochet. I am very proud of the outcome.

Ever since we were given matching, yet different, bedside table lamps, my husband has used his covered as it was too bright. As they were also aging, the glue on the trim was coming off and looked tatty. We decided they needed a makeover.

H had some stones in his craft collection and revamped the base of his lamp. I took that as the nudge I needed to do the shade. I had bought some new trim years back when we acquired the lamps but now I thought the whole shade needed a revamp. We decided crocheting over the existing material with a thin cotton was the way to go.

I started by attaching the thread to the rims by slip stitch, then created a foundation single chain around the top rim. As the lamp was already in sections that got slightly larger, I envisioned using a shell pattern however the first panel took over a month to complete as I experimented with shells, the height and number of them, whether I needed to chain between each shell or not. Thankfully the other two sides didn't take as long but it was still a lengthy process.

At this point H was getting impatient, after all he had had a cloth draped over a bare lightbulb on his fancy new base for nearly 2 months at this point. I decided that the remaining three sections needed to be quicker so opted for alternating single, half double and double crochet rows, which were much faster to make up.

The trickiest part of the makeover was connecting the panels vertically as on the edges it wasn't always clear on how or where to connect. I knew that a baby blue colour was the way to go as it is the colour of our bedroom curtains, but as it was thin, it made it even trickier.

Finally it was time to stick on the trim but we didn't have the right glue! After two failed attempts with glue we had in the house (quick drying superglue and craft glue) we decided to invest in a glue gun. I chose one from Action, a shop in our local shopping centre, my go to shop for all things craft.

Ta da! All done. The last thing we did was get a warmer, lower wattage, light bulb and now we have the perfect bedside lamp. All I have to do now is update mine, but with Christmas gifts in full swing it will take another nudge to get me to do that.