Cosh and Walters’ “The Crochet Workbook” includes a crochet hanging chair. I really liked the look and concept, but wanted to take the freeform techniques a little further than they were in the chair in that book. I was a bit disappointed that in a book with some really interesting things, what could have been a really wild concept hadn’t been explored more fully.

I also wanted my hanging chair to BOUNCE, so I could sit in it and crochet, listen to music and bounce up and down at the same time. So I figured out a way to spring it internally, which means that it can be bounced and spun and swung.

The chair’s seat is held rigid by a metal ring which I had made by a local welder. The ring is 4’ in diameter. Fine nylon rope holds the weight of anyone sitting in the chair, but that is hidden by a crochet mesh worked over the rope. Elasticised yachting rope (cotton/synthetic) was used in the internal structure to add to the bounce-ability.

The crochet is really just a “skin” over the hidden structure. The metal ring is fairly heavy and I intended bouncing and swinging the chair, so went for maximum strength in construction.

The inspiration for the colour scheme was ocean colours and textures. I wanted the chair to look like some sort of pod which had been just retrieved from underwater encrusted with bizarre and colourful marine life, so there’s quite a bit of surface crochet action going on.

I made huge chunks of crochet, some 6’ or more longer. Most were much longer than they were wide. Then they are all crocheted together so that the chair appears to be a seamless whole.

There are all sorts of yarns in this piece, wool, handspun, silk, mohair, synthetics, you name it, whatever I could lay my hands on at the time which looked durable and would be nice to sit on/in. This is pre-fun-fur yarns, so there are none of them.

Children absolutely love it!