Our Final Advent Gift

You can win a gift hamper, which includes lots of items from our web site to the value of £100, simply by sharing and liking our Facebook page.


The hamper includes crochet hooks, scissors, small crochet kits and patterns and we will announce the winner on Boxing Day.

You can go to our Facebook page by following this link.

Happy Christmas
Jane & Andy @ Janie Crow

Advent Gift Day 23

The pattern for the 'Mosaic Star' motif was the Advent Gift for Day 23. This post has now been removed.



This design was inspired by the really fine and meticulous tile mosaics created by Persian artisans to decorate important buildings such as mosques and palaces. Some of the designs I used as my inspiration were so intricate and had such fine detail that I could never hope to recreate them, but hopefully this piece evokes at least a little bit of the spellbinding nature of the traditional mosaic designs.

Advent Gift Day 22

The Advent Gift for Day 22 was the pattern for a motif which featured in my crochet club design in 2012. 


The pattern and accompanying images have now been removed from the blog and a new offer for day 23 is now in place.

Surface Crochet Technique

The Advent 'gift' for Day 19 is the following technique tutorial.

You can copy and paste it if you want to keep it as a reference later on.

To see the last 7 Advent Gifts between now and Christmas Day visit the Facebook page

Surface Crochet:

Surface Crochet is a great way of adding decoration and extra interest to your crochet or knit pieces once they are fastened off. Surface crochet looks the same as sewn chain stitch, which is a common embroidery stitch.

Hold the yarn you wish to use for the surface crochet at the reverse of the work:


Insert your hook into the required place – you will see that crochet stitches make consistent holes, so simply choose which line you wish to follow. Catch the yarn at the reverse side of the work:


Draw the yarn through to the front of the work using your hook, making sure to anchor the tail end of the yarn at the back of the work so that the stitches do not slip through to the front side of the work:


Insert your hook into the next hole:


Draw the yarn through to the front of the work using your hook (2 loops on hook):


Draw first loop through the second to create a slip stitch:


Continue in this way to create your chain stitch design:


Once you have completed your design, cut the yarn tail:


Draw the tail through to the front of the work and thread through the eye of a sewing needle. Sew around first chain as in the image below:



The images below show surface crochet on a background of double crochet: