Khloé the crochet kid

She has only been crocheting for about four months but already 11-year-old Khloé Crawford has made a business out of it.

The form one student of Cunupia Secondary School practices amigurumi, the Japanese art of knitting or crocheting small stuffed yarn creatures, and has been selling her toys under the name The Crochet Cat – her favourite animal.

Khloé’s mother, Christine Crawford-Lezama explained because of issues at school, when Khloé was in standard four she started getting a lot of anxiety and her grades declined. As a result, for the past two years, Khloé and her younger sister, now four years old, were homeschooled.

She said any time they took a break, Khloé would pick up her phone and go on the internet.

Khloé said, “I didn’t have anything to do at home and mummy was quarrelling that I was on the phone too much. To make her stop quarrelling with me I started looking for hobbies.”

She started with latch hooking but soon gave it up.

“At that time I was organising for SEA (Secondary Entrance Assessment) and stuff, and the needle broke so it wasn’t working out. I was no good at it anyway so I gave up and put it away.”

But she still needed a hobby so they bought new needles and started crocheting even though they did not know anything about the craft. They looked at tutorials on YouTube and got the hang of it.

Christine said she realised Khloé was interested in crocheting and was good at it, so she asked her father to order a beginner’s kit for his granddaughter.

Khloé said she got the kit after her SEA exam as was amazed at the number of tools and accessories, half of which she didn’t know how to use at the time.

They Googled the uses of the tools and tried some of the pattens that came with the kit’s instruction book as well as some from YouTube. Khloé started with a bumble bee, which she said was not very good, then an octopus, which she gave to her grandfather, a duck, and a cup.

She said her mother took pictures and videos of her crocheting as well as the results and posted them on her WhatsApp status.

Christine’s friend Trissica had a business making and engraving cups which she sold at artisan markets. She saw the status and messaged Christine, asking for some of the crochet cups to be sold at her market table. She gave all the money from the sales to Khloé.

“After that I got really bored of cups and started to make a bunch of random stuff. But Trissica messaged us about a Youth Week at NAPA. Mom sent the email, we got accepted and we started to prepare like crazy. I create my own patterns and made turtles, whales and cows, and when we went there we sold out completely.”

Since then she has sold her amigurumi toys at several other markets under the name The Crochet Cat and will be at the TechAgri Expo at UWI, St Augustine today (Sunday).

Khloé said since school started in September she has been very busy but she has made three new products – a cat dressed as a banana, a potted plant paperweight, and an axolotl which is a type of aquatic salamander.

She plans to register The Crochet Cat as a business and is testing out making fridge magnets and keychains.

“I didn’t think it would have been such a big deal. I thought it would have been like all the other businesses out there but I guess not. I want to go to more markets and feel the happiness and sadness of saying goodbye to my amigurumis and giving them to somebody else and giving them a home.”