At the start of last year the time was quickly approaching with my daughter heading off to Kindergarten with the inevitable questions of “What are you going to do with all your spare time?” or being told “You won’t know what to do with yourself”. As most parents know your child heading off to kinder doesn’t necessarily mean that you will suddenly have great amounts of time to yourself. I found that I was busy just doing kinder drop offs and pick ups or just trying to get chores done before you had to go get her again. That’s a whole other story.
But it did make me think that it might be nice to learn something new. Something just for me. But the question was what. I put the call out on my Facebook feed for suggestions, googled some ideas and still came up blank. The only thing that made sense was that I liked to make things. So some sort of craft
I had learnt to knit years ago and had memories of too tight stitches and tears of frustration at sudden increases and decreases of stitches that I couldn’t explain. The thought of the time it took to complete large projects was not too appealing either.
So with no idea of what to do I headed off to the local craft shop. Local craft shop is kind of a stretch, think large franchised craft store. It’s not exactly known for inspiration if you have no idea what you want to do. After wandering around for a while I decided that buying a crochet hook and a ball of yarn wasn’t too much of an investment. One hook $5 (prices subject to a very dodgy memory) and an on clearance ball of yarn $1. I always loved looking at my Aunty’s crochet books even though I didn’t understand one iota of the pattern. How hard could it be? Luckily for me I picked it up really quickly.
As a hater of YouTube it suddenly became my best friend. There are so many videos on there with info on how to do different stitches. I have no one local to ask so it became the best resource. I would suggest if you look on YouTube find a presenter that seems to click with you. There are literally hundreds of videos.
One of the best tips I saw in a video (I would reference it but I honestly can’t remember where I saw it) was that don’t take too much notice of what skill level a pattern is listed at. Try it. What’s the worst that can happen? You have to pull it out and start again? No worries. You might even surprise yourself. I know I have.
So that’s how this old dog (yeah I know 36 years of age is not really old in the grand scheme of things but hey it made for a catchy title) came to the world of crochet. And as my tagline says, So many projects, so little time.
