Happy hooking.. in Questions

Does anyone out there crochet? How did you learn? Which project (that you’ve completed) are you the most proud of? What’s your favorite pattern?

I learned to crochet in my early teens and still do now in my early thirties. What once started out as a fascination of my mother turning one strand of yarn into a blanket, is now my therapeutic relief and possibly an addiction. I still remember the day I walked into my mother’s room and saw her with a half made blanket in her lap with a hook and a never ending piece of yarn. At the time, she was going to make blankets for my brother and I. I looked at the one strand of yarn and then watched her use a hook and turn it into a blanket. I thought it was magical. I had asked her to teach me and she promised teach me when I was older. Fast forward a few years, she had finally started on my brother’s blanket (mind you mine wasn’t even close to complete) and I asked her to teach me. She got up, walked over to her jewelry box and pull out an H hook for me to practice with. She gave me a skein of yarn and embarked upon the painstakingly slow process of teaching me how to crochet. After I mastered chain stitches, she taught me how to make a half treble crochet stitch. The she cut me lose and told me to practice. If I had improved, she would take me to the store and buy me my own yarn. By the end of the night we went to our local yarn store and I had my first few skeins of yarn.

I have so many scarves that I made. I cringe at how bad my edges were. One side had perfect edges, while the other side curved like parenthesis. A couple years later my dad bought us laptops for Christmas. Back then YouTube tutorials for crochet were hard to come by. I watched my first tutorial on how to make a crochet beanie. I crocheted so slowly back then that one single crochet beanie took me 4 or 5 hours to complete. I was so proud of myself. I never gave up.

Nowadays I make nearly everything. I taught myself how to read patterns and it takes me a week or less to crochet a king sized blanket. I’m proud of the journey and where I am now.

Crocheting is one thing I can do whenever I’m feeling at my worst. Crocheting calms my mind and the only thing I focus on is the love I put into my work and counting the occasional stitches.