Around this time each year, cherry blossoms make their lovely and ethereal presence known. They are called Sakura are apparently A Thing in Japan, with many festivals held in their honour. The varieties I’ve seen in pictures of Japan seem to be mostly pale pink and beige-ish in colour.

We have pale pink ones on this side of the Pacific, but the ones I am most fond of are the white ones. When I walk through downtown Santa Cruz , I do so amid a shower of white petals. I’ve always wanted to create something that evoked these flowers, but couldn’t decide what. Do I make a long garland? Not really evocative. Do I just crochet them and scatter them about? Messy. Then it occurred to me that the entire project didn’t have to be made of yarn. I could create a branch with green florist wire and string the crocheted blossoms and leaves on it – which is what I did.

I already had some DMC Baroque fine cotton yarn left over from my crocheted rocks, which worked perfectly for these flowers. And I used a very basic flower design: magic circle, ten HDC, three DC, one CH, three DC in the first stitch, SC in the second, and alternate those. Then do a SC in each stitch. I used three colours of thread (bright pink, light pink, mauve) to create the center colour of the flower. Then I crocheted a few leaves: chain nine, SC in first two stitches, HDC in next two, DC in next two, HDC in the next, SC in the next. Flip over and do in reverse. Easy peasy. I used a 3.25mm hook for both.