A while ago, I saw ‘roosting pouches’ for sale… little pockets of woven natural fibre that birds can use for shelter in the winter and may choose to nest in in the summer… and I thought ‘I could crochet something like that out of jute’. Jute is a natural fibre from plants in the genus Corchorus, which is related to the mallows. You probably know it best in Hessian or burlap. So, over the past few days, whilst stressful things are happening elsewhere in my life, I have been playing around with this idea. I started off with a weaver bird nest in mind:

“Weaver Nest” by Tu7uh – Own work. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons – click here for link

What I created on my first attempt was this:

First try

It’s a bit wonky, but I thought it was a good start. However, I’m never going to be as skillful as a weaver bird, so my second attempt was more cylindrical, but came out rather larger than I had planned:

Second try

My third attempt is a better size, but the top was rather a fiddle to make:

Third try

Here are the first and second together so you can see the size difference:

Two and three together

And this is my latest:

Fourth try

I think it’s rather stylish and I’m sure a bird would consider it a good place to roost.  I think I will make some more for sale, plus I’m going to write up the pattern for #4 and sell that too… I couldn’t find anything similar currently available on Ravelry.

It turns out that jute is quite pleasant to work with – I thought it would be tough on my fingers but, in fact, it’s not too bad and I have worked with wools that are rougher. So, I’d better get to work on some for the shop…