When I learned to knit, the first thing I did was make a garter stitch scarf on size 11 needles. My second project was a garter stitch dishcloth using increasing and decreasing and a little eyelet border using YO (knitting closely supervised by my grandmother). Then I took on a ribbed project, knitting in the round, and so on… It was three years before I tried my first sweater, or even intarsia.
When I learned to crochet, I downloaded the instructions online – knit up a little single crochet swatch, called it a potholder – and immediately began projects involving lace, crocheting in the round, all sorts of fancy stitches in the round… well you see where I’m going. The projects either led to imperfect FOs born from endless frustration or utter disasters that couldn’t even be frogged because of all the terrible knots in them. (Most of which I have kept secret.) And now, I’m wondering if my problem with crochet is that I don’t actually really know how to crochet.
So, I am going to condemn myself to at least one more project of flat, single crochet – no matter how boring it sounds. Then I will work up from there. In fact, I inherited a half-finished single crochet afghan from my aunt (with the million balls of white yarn, aforementioned in this blog), but I promptly tucked it away because I thought a whole afghan of single crochet sounded boring. The sad truth is, I actually had to post pictures of it on Craftster to figure out what the stitch pattern was. Imagine my embarrassment at my own ignorance when it turned out to be single crochet. Yet, I still scorned it.
I thought maybe at some point I’d bind it off, call it a baby afghan, and gift it somewhere. (It just feels wrong to frog someone else’s hard work.) Anyway, now I realize – the best thing for me to do is to finish it. It’s the perfect opportunity to work on a large project to practice my basic crochet skills – like pulling a loop through the needle without splitting the yarn and getting a real grasp on what the hell that turning chain is all about. Ha ha. (Brianna, if you are reading this, I’m sure you are laughing at me!)
ppppppppppppl,k <-- Roxy's contribution to this blog entry. So, in conclusion. Pepper is not a quitter. I will become a crochet goddess if it’s the last thing I do!!! (Why such a long post? I am obviously avoiding working on my note.)
I didn’t even know what a turning chain was until a couple years ago! In single crochet, you can get away without doing a turning chain if you just crochet in every single stitch, which is what I did for years. You should get The Happy Hooker book, if you don’t already have it. I like how it explains things and it has some good beginner patterns.
-Brianna