As soon as you enter Adinda’s World, you can’t help but be inspired by the bold colors, oversized organic flowers and flowing nature of all of her amazing work.
Adinda Zoutman learned to crochet around the age of 6 or 7. Her mother taught her the basics and then she taught the rest to herself from there. Although she can’t quite recall the first item that she ever made, she is sure that it must have been something for one of her dowels – perhaps a crochet dress or a shawl.
Adinda continues to make beautiful shawls today. Many of these shawls are covered in beautiful, decorative 3d flowers. She says, “I like all kinds of flowers – in nature and in crochet!” Adinda doesn’t use patterns, working from her own imagination to constantly come up with new, surprising flowers.
Although her shawls are stunning, Adinda’s favorite thing to crochet these days is portraits. She says they are always portraits with a smile, a bit fun, a bit strange, sometimes very big but never too serious. She also likes to make large dolls.
Adinda doesn’t have a favorite fiber or brand of yarn but says that it is important for her that whatever she uses is very soft and comes in nice, sweet colors. Her very favorite color is a hard-to-describe shade of light, almost pastel, blue-green. She loves mixing different types of yarn in one project to make the work more exciting.
Her excitement stays strong throughout all of her work. She really loves to crochet, not overthinking it but just enjoying her own curiosity into what can happen with her hook. She is always enthusiastic at the beginning of a project, wondering what is going to come of it as it develops. What she wants most for people to see in her work is love and happiness; her greatest joy is when someone else gets joy from what she has created.
She says, “When someone is happy with what I have made, it feels like a great gift to me. It also makes me happy to make things, such as shawls, for my sweet friends and to be able to make them happy in that way.”
Adinda often crochets at home alone in the evening, watching television. However, she can sometimes be found on video chat with a friend who also enjoys crochet. They don’t live near to one another so they get on the video, each drinking their own coffee and crocheting together while they talk. In addition to crochet she enjoys painting and making music, although she finds less and less time for those things now that crochet has become her job.
That’s okay, though, of course, because crochet has added a lot to her life. She shares, “Crochet made my life better because it is something special. You can always crochet, even when something bad happens; it helps you to come out of your head and feel more relaxed. (For example, it helped me during a difficult time when son was very ill.)
Crochet has also allowed her to meet many new creative people. Although she doesn’t know a lot of crochet artists per se, and she gets her inspiration more from nature and music than from other crafters, the people she has met have been wonderful. Adinda now teaches freeform crochet and has met many great folks through that work. She has also had the opportunity to travel a lot, particularly to Spain and Italy, thanks to crochet. It feels like the best work in the world for her to be doing! If asked to pick one artist that has inspired her, she names Frida Kahlo for her “art, color and style”.
Asked to share one interesting thing about herself or her work, Adinda tells us, “Although I crocheted for a long time, it only became my work about one year ago. Before that, I did it in my world. I didn’t even know that there were many people who also had a passion for crochet. It made me happy to discover that, because it hasn’t always been this way; there was a period when people thought it was old-fashioned but not it has been rediscovered by many who understand that crochet can make your life happier and more creative!”