A couple days ago, I had the opportunity to teach a friend to crochet. My friend, Kathy, is about 2/3 through her goal of doing one thing new every day for a year. At some point, I offered or she asked me to give her a crochet lesson. Kathy’s blog is full of her interesting and inventive attempts to reach her goal. Personally, I hope she continues her blog long after her next birthday!
Following is her description of our lesson.
My friend JD is the editor of the crochet page at the Craftgossip Blog Network. She was one of my first supporters when I started this project, and promised to give me a crochet lesson. We never seemed to find a mutually convenient time to get together; when I reminded her last week I was still waiting she suggested that we do it right away. Today I learned how to crochet.
We met at a nearby coffee shop. JD brought yarn, a hook, and an instruction book for me and her own hook and skein of yarn to demonstrate. I’ve always admired her ability to work on a project and chat at the same time. She makes crocheting look easy, so I was looking forward to getting started.
However, not everything went smoothly. The first problem was that I am left-handed and JD is right-handed. I recalled my one (and only!) knitting lesson with my mom when I was a teenager. We had the same hand dominance issue, and I could never learn how to knit. After we figured out that sitting across from her made everything a mirror image (which worked for me), JD started with the concepts of properly holding the yarn and the basic chain stitch. Although my chains weren’t exactly all the same size, I soon got the hang of the concept and was ready to move on to single crochet.
JD showed me the stitch; I understood the concept, but I had trouble doing it. When I wrapped the yarn around the hook (yarn over in technical terms), I either wound it too much or not enough, and I’d often get the hook caught up on loops when I pulled the yarn through them. After several ripped-out stitches, JD took my sample and quickly got me back on the right track. Although I was ready to give up, she kept saying I was doing great.
After I got to the end of the row I was deemed ready for double crochet. This involves extra yarn overs and pulling the hook through different combinations of two loops at a time. Again, my fingers didn’t do what my brain was telling them to do. When I finally finished a stitch, it was either too tight or too loose compared to its neighbors. Again, JD was kind enough to say that everyone had those problems when they started.
The last thing JD demonstrated was the half double stitch–yet another combination of yarn overs and pullthroughs. After I muddled through a couple of these, our time was up. JD let me take the hook and yarn home, and invited me to a meeting of her crochet club. I think, though, that I’ll need LOTS of practice before I’m ready to crochet in public!
NOTE: Here’s the link to Kathy’s blog:
http://kathyat49.blogspot.com/
FURTHER NOTE:
Kathy emailed me the day after our lesson to let me know that she has BEEN PRACTICING HER CROCHET! I’m very pleased. I hope she keeps it up. You may be reading another installment in this saga later!
Thanks for your kind comments! I’ve not gotten around to putting the skein of yarn away…Son #3 came by last week, wanted an explanation of why it was there, and then put in his request for a crocheted hat (blue and white, with a puffball on the top) for this winter!