How it all began
It actually all started with a phone call. My daughter-in-law was in a second-hand shop and my son rang me.
“Mum, there are chairs here. Ten euros each. Want them?”
Do I want them? Naturally I do!
Whenever the whole family gets together, we always have the same problem. There are more people than chairs. Someone drags in an office chair from another room, someone sits on a stool, and eventually the whole house turns into one big furniture-moving exercise. At that price, there was not much to think about. My daughter-in-law even brought the chairs home for me. ❤️
First impressions
The chairs themselves were sturdy. The wood was good. But that fabric… worn. A little tired. And most importantly… it simply was not me.
I could have just cleaned them and carried on using them. But if I was going to do anything at all, I wanted to do it so that every time I walked past, I would think:
“Yes… now it’s right.”
Ready-made stretchy chair covers? No. They are simply not my style.
And so the great yarn saga began
The first plan was very simple. I would make macramé covers for the chairs. In theory, at least.
In practice, a long journey through Temu, AliExpress and craft shops began. At one point I was absolutely convinced I needed 3 mm braided polyester cord. Then I was equally certain that what I actually needed was a completely different kind of polyester cord.
Then I investigated cotton macramé cords, hollow cotton yarns, crochet yarns and about five other materials whose existence I had known nothing about that same morning.
At one point I even ended up sitting on my own macramé rug. A perfectly scientific question had arisen: is polyester too slippery to sit on? Sacrifices have to be made in the name of science.
The experiment was a success. The rug was not slippery at all.
But the more inspiration photos I looked at, the less I wanted to do macramé. And the more textured crochet patterns I saw, the more I liked them.
Eventually I arrived at a rather uncomfortable realisation. Maybe I did not actually want to do macramé. Maybe I simply wanted the finished piece to look like macramé.
Those are not at all the same thing.
And that is how I arrived at Nako Denim
After four hours of searching. After dozens of open browser windows. After countless reviews. After endless deliberation. And, naturally, after a long discussion with ChatGPT.
Historical note: 06.06.2026.
Tiina listened to the AI.
Not because the AI told her to.
Not because the AI was smarter.
But because after our four-hour argument, 57 cords, 14 colour charts, three existential crises and one experiment involving me sitting on my rug, the AI finally reached the same conclusion I had already been heading towards myself. 😆
The most unbelievable part is not even that I listened. The most unbelievable part is that I did not buy something else in the meantime.
For me, that is Olympic-level self-control. 🤣
And I have to admit that if someone had told me at the start of the day:
“By this evening you’ll be buying Nako Denim from Karnaluks.”
I would have replied:
“I don’t believe you. First I’ll work my way through at least three Chinese platforms and consider 17 alternatives.”
Which, naturally, is exactly what happened. 💀
If this yarn turns out to be the right choice, this day deserves a place in the memoirs.
🏆 “The Great Yarn Crisis of 2026”
Subtitle:
“The rare occasion when Tiina did not buy on the first impulse, but thought for four hours and ended up happy with the decision.”
Days like that do not happen very often.
Nako Denim. Light beige. Exactly the sort of shade that suits my dark oak table, old sideboard and my “old-soul” home.
I bought ten balls and was absolutely convinced that would be enough for six chairs. Optimism is supposed to be what keeps us moving forward…
Reality
The first chair was finished. Then I weighed the yarn I had left. Did the maths. Looked again.
And realised…
One chair had used about six balls.
I sat quietly for a little while.
My wallet sat there too.
Then it fainted.
Hello again, Karnaluks!
Naturally, I had to go back to the shop. I bought another 20 balls.
By the way… completely baffling. They cost more in Karnaluks’s online shop than they did in the physical shop. I have no idea how that is possible. If anyone knows, feel free to explain it to me too.
The patterns need changing too
I made the first chair in a honeycomb pattern. But I realised fairly quickly that if I made six chairs in a row exactly the same, I might eventually find myself accidentally crocheting a chair cover for Bim as well.
So a new plan was born. Three chairs would have the honeycomb pattern. Three would have the waffle pattern.
Both devour yarn with equal enthusiasm. At least it keeps things more interesting for me.
And then came the wash test
Because let’s be honest. If I have spent six weeks (or at least it felt like it) wrestling with one chair, I want to know what happens after the first wash.
I washed the covers in warm water. No spinning them around in the washing machine, just nice and gently. I simply let most of the water drain out.
I put them to dry… directly on the chairs.
Not because I have some fancy drying studio at home. Simply because if the cover was going to stretch, it might as well stretch to fit exactly the chair it was made for.
I put plastic over the chair first, because wet crochet and chair upholstery are not exactly the most romantic pairing in the world.
And then the waiting began.
Day one.
Day two.
Day three.
Day four.
That honeycomb pattern is so thick and dense that at one point I started thinking that when the end of the world comes, the only survivors will be cockroaches and my chair covers.
But it did dry.
And most importantly… it did not stretch out. It did not sag. It did not start going wavy anywhere.
So it can now officially be said:
The project survived its first wash.
But the hardest part was not the crochet
The hardest question was actually:
How do I attach the cover to the chair?
My first thought was ribbon.
No.
It looked… well… rather pornographic.
Back to Karnaluks I went. I bought hooks. Rings. Elastic. Came home. Looked at them. Thought.
And realised…
It was going to look exactly as pornographic.
Shit happens.
Sometimes the best ideas arrive only after every other one has been tried
In the end, I abandoned all of that.
Instead, I crocheted bows. Under them I hid the hooks that I used to fasten the corners of the back edge of the seat cover.
Along the lower edge of the sides of the bottom cover, I threaded elastic in exactly the same shade through the crocheted ribbing. I attached the matching hook pieces to the ends of the elastic.
I pulled the elastic taut and fastened the hooks.
In places where elastic alone was not enough, tiny stainless golden pins came to the rescue.
You cannot see them.
They hold.
And most importantly…
It does not look like porn.
The backrest cover
The solution for the backrest turned out to be much simpler than I had imagined at first.
I crocheted ribbing and a row of loops along the sides. Then I crocheted a cord and laced it through the loops in a zigzag.
The cover slipped over the backrest like a sleeve. I pulled the cord tight and tucked the ends underneath the cover.
At first the cover sat a little lumpy, but I expect it will gradually settle into place with use.
The first one is finished
The first chair is now finished. Five more are waiting their turn. Once all six are done, the wooden parts will be restored.
Only then can this project truly be called finished.
And if anyone asks how much a chair like this costs, I will say I got it from a second-hand shop for ten euros.
But the price of this story… that can no longer be measured in euros.
I look at the finished chair and think…
Sometimes one phone call is enough to start a project that teaches more than you ever expected at the beginning.
And if you ask whether I would do all of it again…
…I probably would.
The plan: all six finished by Christmas
At the moment, three and a half chair covers are finished. Yes, half – one chair has its seat cover, while the backrest is still waiting its turn.
The plan is to finish all six by Christmas. Since plans tend to move faster than real life, Pits, Plaan and Pets made a little animation showing how the story will hopefully end. The animation has already reached winter and Christmas; I am still only halfway there with the crochet hook. 😁