Today is the first day of Chi­nese new year. I made this bam­boo as a gift. Pret­ty hap­py with how it turned out. 

I thought bam­boo gen­er­al­ly sym­bol­izes good luck because it’s sold in every Chi­nese shop that sells plants. But with a quick search on the inter­net I learned that it also rep­re­sents renew­al (because of how quick­ly it grows), flexibility/strength, and longevi­ty — so, resilience, tenaciousness. 

“Tena­cious” is a word that I’d like to be described by. I don’t give up, or per­haps more truth­ful­ly I find it hard giv­ing up on things or peo­ple. Some would say that I’m not very good at let­ting go. Oth­er have said I’m stub­born. I’d like to think that I’m tena­cious. But I guess a way for­ward would be to cul­ti­vate flex­i­bil­i­ty, to renew or reori­ent my approach to how I’m tena­cious­ly con­nect­ing to some things. 

Any­way, I’d also say that the cro­chet slip stitch is a very bam­boo-like stitch, because it makes a firm fab­ric and there­fore tena­cious, it is how­ev­er also very flex­i­ble and stretch­able, almost like a knit­ted rib.

Here I’d like to share a loose­ly formed recipe for mak­ing the bam­boo. It’s kind of like free-formed cro­chet­ing, and how tall the plant is depends on the vase you’re using, but there are some basics to it, in case any­one would like to give it a try.

I used:

Caron Sim­ply Soft for the bam­boo stalk because of its sheen

Patons Astra for the yel­low rings and caps

Bernat Super Val­ue for the leaves

5.5 mm hook for the stalk

3.5 mm hook for the rings and caps

Tapes­try needle

Pop­si­cle sticks

Vase with pebbles

Stalks are made with back loop slip stitch (tuto­r­i­al).
With larg­er hook and lighter green, make a chain of desired length. I start­ed with 25 ch for the tallest, and 21 and 15 for the oth­er two. Then sl st BLO until piece is about 1.5″ wide. With­out fas­ten­ing off, sl st to join the seams togeth­er length­wise, mak­ing a long tube (the sl st seam will be on the out­side; the piece won’t be turned inside out after seam­ing). Fas­ten off. 

Rings are made around the stalks with sur­face slip stitch (tuto­r­i­al).
With small­er hook and yel­low, attach yarn where you want the ring to be at the back seam of the stalk. sl st in every stitch in the rows cross­wise (not just the stitch that appears as a “v”, but also the stitch in between the “v“s, so that the rings would pro­trude a bit). Fas­ten off after every ring made and pull the tails inside the stalk.

Caps are made with mag­ic ring (tuto­r­i­al) with 8 sc inside the ring, sl st to join with first sc, then fas­ten off and leave a long tail for sewing. Attach ring to the top of the stalk. 

Leaves may be a lit­tle tricky to explain… I regret not tak­ing progress pho­tos, very sor­ry. It took quite a bit of exper­i­men­ta­tion but I set­tled on this method and I think the results are quite live­ly look­ing. I hope this makes sense.

With small­er hook and dark­er green, ch 5 to 7 (this is the stem you’re sewing to the stalk, so its length depends on how you want to posi­tion the sprig of leaves on the bam­boo), dc in sec­ond ch from hook, *[ch 1, dc in ch just made] two or three times (depend­ing on how long you want the leaf to be), ch 2, sl st in 2nd ch from hook, sl st even­ly into the dc’s made ear­li­er (rough­ly 2 sl st per dc), sl st into the last ch of the stem*. At this point you can sl st down every ch of the stem then fas­ten off with tail for sewing, or you can make anoth­er leave by sl st down just a cou­ple of ch on the stem, then repeat * to *, and sl st down every ch of the stem, fas­ten off and leave a tail for sewing.

Sew the leaves to the stalks as desired.

Assem­bly:

The bam­boo stalks are sup­port­ed by pop­si­cle sticks on the inside. I used pop­si­cle sticks because it’s the only thing I can find to use at home. The width of it and the thick­ness of the cro­chet fab­ric takes up the inte­ri­or of the stalks so they don’t need more stuff­ing. I’ve had to con­nect a cou­ple of pop­si­cle sticks togeth­er for the taller two stalks by sim­ply over­lap­ping the ends of the sticks and glu­ing them togeth­er with white glue (hot glue would be a bet­ter choice). 

To deter­mine the lengths of pop­si­cle sticks you need, mea­sure how deeply you want the sticks to extend toward the base of the vase. I would want the sticks to actu­al­ly touch the base of the vase to make sure the sticks don’t wob­ble too eas­i­ly. Deter­mine the length of stick that is stick­ing out of the end of the stalk. It would be the same for all the stalks. Then mea­sure how tall each stick will need to be accord­ing to the length of the stalk. 

Pour a lay­er of peb­bles into the vase. I think small­er stone chips at least for the bot­tom lay­er are bet­ter for sta­bil­i­ty. Insert the stalks and arrange as desired, then pour on more peb­bles. I used dif­fer­ent glass ones on top for interest.

I lat­er added a red rib­bon around the stalk for gift-giv­ing that is not pic­tured because it blocked the bam­boo too much. But that also helps with the stability.

I did­n’t have any oth­er new year dec­o­ra­tions but thank­ful­ly there are emojis 😊🎋

Wish­ing every­one good health and hap­pi­ness in the year of the 🐀