Hooked on Crochet

When I was in middle school or high school, my grandmother taught me how to crochet. I remember sitting in the rocking chair in our living room practicing, but I must have gotten bored with it because the hobby didn’t last. Flash forward to a couple years ago. My mom had made me some cute dishtowels with crochet toppers that hang on the oven handle. I wanted to make one and since I knew how to knit, I figured that I’d pick up crochet pretty easily. Wrong! I just couldn’t get it. I decided to leave well enough alone and continued knitting, happy with that craft.

Well, yesterday morning I was browsing crafting blogs and oohing and ahhing over adorable sewing projects. The idea of getting a sewing machine got stuck in my head. Last year, shortly after Christmas, I was considering getting one but quickly put the idea out of my head because of the home improvement projects we were planning. So, in order to get the thought out of my head yesterday I decided that I’d spend the day teaching myself to crochet. The house was clean, and dinner would be easy, so why not? I already had a set of hooks and plenty of yarn.

I found some good videos on YouTube and within an hour I’d gotten the single crochet down pat! I decided to just focus on doing that over and over again and by the time I was ready for bed last night I’d made myself a dishcloth:

Sure it’s misshapen and somehow I managed to increase the number of stitches up at the top there, but considering my previous, unsuccessful attempts to learn crochet I was pretty proud of myself. (And if you just fold under the sides, you don’t even see how uneven it is!) It’s a dishcloth, after all. Today I plan on working on double crochet and half-double crochet. The most difficult things for me so far are tension and holding the yarn comfortably. I’m sure both of those things will come in time. I’m not ready to give up on knitting (I love it far too much!), but I think this will be a fun switch!