Granny's Crochet Hook

Hello!

We’re Dasha and Kate of “Granny’s Crochet Hook”, sisters and amigurumi enthusiasts from St. Petersburg.
Making toys has been our hobby for about six years now. Despite the account name we use on social media, we weren’t taught how to crochet by our grannies. Actually, none of them knew how to do it, and how to knit or sew either. In primary school, we had to crochet lace collars and doilies in housekeeping classes, and we never found it fascinating, to say at least. Coming from a family of scientists, we got our technical degrees too, but we haven’t used them yet. Instead, we got to work as editors and graphic designers in printing and publishing houses and advertising agencies and design/crafting events managers.

We picked up the hooks again when Dasha’s oldest daughter was about 1 year old, to give her something unique to play with. However, handcrafted bunnies were as interesting for her as writings of Karl Marx, but we discovered amigurumi for ourselves. Having started from the pattern of Hen Sisters designed by Maria Sommer of @deestraperlo, we haven’t spent a single week without making something. We also started an Instagram account to share pictures of our makes and good laughs at them with our not numerous followers.

Having this little of social media activity, we still managed to get to “know” a lot of amazing creators and do a few “collabs” with textile artists and illustrators such as June Mira (@june_kurumi), Natasha Tishchenko (@natura_crochet), Jaka Vukotič (@jakavukotic) and Nour Abdallah (@nourillu). The response we got to a few crocheted dolls we turned Nour’s sketches into was so tremendous that we almost instantly were offered a book deal with Meteoor Books and suddenly went from humble crafters to amigurumi designers working with a professional illustrator :)

Having about 20 crochet patterns under our belts now, we still consider ourselves beginners, we’re still learning, we haven’t developed our distinctive style of making things yet, but that’s the beauty of creating: it’s never boring, there’s always so much more to discover, and we’re happy to share the joy of handcrafting with you!

Sincerely,
Dasha and Kate