Have you been watching the Tour de France? For the last two weeks, cyclists from all over the world have spent all but one day covering the countryside of France, climbing mountains and sprinting across the plains in speeding packs. In honor of their astonishing efforts, here's some bicycle-themed crochet for us to admire (along with some knitting).

Fiber artist Martha Simons constructed this fully crocheted banana-seat bike for an art show in 2009. Another view of it on Flickr. The lace inside the wheel rims is particularly fun! 

Many crocheters have discovered that it's possible to decorate a bike without making it unrideable; one option is to create a "skirt guard" to stitch to the fender on the back wheel. 

Here's a cute bike basket: 

Olek, of course, has done work on bicycles!

If you've been riding for quite awhile, or if you have a local bike shop that has too many old innertubes, perhaps you'd like to make yourself a small rug? 

Your Knitting Life had a mosaic knitting pattern for a bike basket; you could use the same idea to make one in Tunisian crochet! (Margie Dougherty was kind enough to give us a few thoughts about her design process in the YKL blog.) 

For even more fun images, try a Google image search on "bicycle crochet"; for EVEN MORE, try the same search on Pinterest or Flickr! 

Find the June/July 2011 issue of Your Knitting Life in our online store.