NB Het haakpatroon voor de Willow lampion is ook in het Nederlands verkrijgbaar! Zelfde link onderaan de blog post.
There’s something about lanterns that make them the perfect accessory to your house and foremost, your garden! They add coziness, warmth and creativity They just give the finishing touch.
My first crochet lantern
In Holland we’ve got a tradition called Sint Maarten. November 11th is the feast day of Sint Martin. Usually there’s a procession with lanterns. We always go to the one in the Vondelpark and it’s amazing. A brass band, children singing, holding their lanterns and all excited because it’s already dark and there’s the promise of sweets. After the procession they go from door to door singing Sint-Maarten songs and are given sweets or fruit.
The first lantern I made was for my daughter for this exact purpose. I’ve made many since, giving them away and even selling them.
The Willow lantern
I wouldn’t be a crochet designer if I didn’t want to design a lantern myself of course.
At first I wanted to design one with lots of different stitches and colours. But then I saw this stitch pattern with all the little windows and I realized it had endless colour possibilities. You could vary the colours of the longer stitches and leave the shorter stitches in one colour, or the other way around or all mixed up!
The long stitches reminded me of the long and slender branches of the willow, hence the name!
Gauge
This is the first pattern for which I had to deal with gauge. But seriously. Gauge is very important as there’s only so much space using a hoop.
I used a 3.5 mm hook but two of my testers went down to 2.5 mm. As it appears, the thinner the yarn, the tighter I crochet.
It’s very important to iron the lantern from the inside once you’re finished. This will improve the stitch definition by a hundred!
Fine yarn
For this pattern I used a finer cotton yarn, Drops Safran and Yarn and colors Must-have. (An alternative is Scheepjes Catona) This yarn accentuates the slenderness of the Willow branches.
Where will you hang your lantern?
