Big THANK YOU for teachers

posted in: Crochet | 0

It is that time of the year again where my calendar fills with end-of-school year events faster than I can blink. And with that them come the never ending requests for donations and teacher gifts.

This year my young son is graduation from his half-day preschool to kindergarten in fall so that I thought I should make something special for his 3 teachers and the lady director of the school instead of just giving some money towards a teacher gift.

What started out as a simple crochet lei (Wikipedia: lei) using a pattern from the first Lei Along over at Ravelry turned into a bigger and bigger and bigger project that I nearly didn’t finish on time! I actually made the last stitches in the car on the way to the year-end family pick-nick!

At first, I had a single tube lei for each teacher – but it looked a bit meager because of the fine yarn I’ve used. It was super soft and pleasant to touch and wear but… not quite look I was hoping for.

Spiral Ilima - Lei Along Colorways 2

Then I got the idea of braiding the tubes for more body – ah, much better. Oh, boy, I just tripled my work! I better get moving on this. The braided lei was about the right size now to be noticeable – but it still was not quite right.

Spiral Ilima - Lei Along Braid

Ribbon! After a couple of re-braiding versions with various ribbons, I decided to go with a subtle use of a very narrow satin ribbon in a complementing color to the lei. Yes, much better… now, what could I add to give it that special something that would make it stand out?

Spiral Ilima - Lei Along Braids Detail

A butterfly? A flower? Off I went experimenting with a couple of patterns and adaptions until I settled on an adaption of the free pattern for a crochet Irish Rose pattern on Lion Brand’s website and from the book “100 Flowers to Knit & Crochet“.

This was the day before the pick-nick and it was getting tight! What a disappointment when the Irish Rose just kind of blended in with the lei – oh, no! It was the right size and idea… the rose by itself looked nice… just… just… ribbon!

Ribbon to the rescue, again! This time I was looking in my stash for a more substantial ribbon to provide a nice background for the rose to pop from – and I found it in a hot pink, feather-edge satin ribbon that would work with all 4 lei colors.

Rosette Award

I had less than an hour left to finish the leis, prep the pick-nick food and zip off to the event. Yikes!

Luckily my DH stepped in and drove so that I was able to apply the last stitches in the car on the way to the pick-nick. Boy, that was a close call! I sure didn’t expect my little single tube lei to grow that much!

Spiral Ilima - Lei Along Triplet

But look how nice it turned out! The lei now looked like an award which it sort of was: a big THANK YOU to some excellent teachers for a job well done!

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