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Ah, Barcelona. The third city I pull out of the Jar of Ideas. I kind of see a theme. One of my sisters probably wrote all the major cities (in Europe? Or the world?) on pieces of paper, to fill the jar a bit.
Since I have never been to Barcelona, I have to do with my own associations. The first thing that came to mind was Salvador Dalí, the surrealistic painter with the iconic mustache. I didn’t know if he had a connection to Barcelona, so I decided to Google a bit. Turns out, Dalí was born in a town called Figueres, near Barcelona. Close enough, I figured. Those melting clocks are amazing and I love to get inspired by a painter of that magnitude.
The project
What to do with Dalí? I mentioned the melting clocks before, which is an image I immediately associate with Dalí. Okay, melting clocks it is. But what material should I use? I have some leftover yarns I could use for a clock, but maybe I want to paint, like Dalí?
I decided to go with crochet, without a pattern. Some shapes are not that hard to make! Basic crochet knowledge will make it a lot easier to free-hand a project like this. In this case, I wanted to create a stretched circle that really started as a circle. I started with a magic ring and decided on the go whether I should crochet a dc (US: sc), half treble (US: hdc), treble (US: dc) or double treble (US: trc). I made sure that I increased a lot, to keep the clock a little bit flat (that didn’t really work out: it started out great, but near the end it got wonky. My guess: too little increases in the final rows). All the stitches that are not dc (US: sc) are used to create an oval-kind of shape. I really wanted the clock to look melted, so it was important that the top and bottom were stretched but the sides were almost normal.
I choose to work with Stylecraft Special DK in the color White (1001) for the clock. After reaching the desired size, I used Stylecraft Special DK Silver (1203) for the edge, existing of slip stitches. After that, I started making the numbers and the hands of the clock with Stylecraft Special DK Graphite (1063). This left me with an incredibly ugly backside! I decided to use some red fabric for the back, and so it became this awesome Dalí-inspired clock!
