Why did you learn to crochet?
I began crocheting in August 2013. Two things motivated me to learn.
I saw a Sophie Digard bag made of hundreds of the cutest puffed flowers in the most delicate of colours and someone told me it was crochet. It blew my mind that THAT was crochet! Back when I was younger my Great Aunt Kitty had a Granny Square Blanket on the back of her sofa. The way I remember it, it smelled of coal fires and smoke and stale old people smell and a home well lived in. In my head a traditional Granny Square blanket reminiscent of the nineteen seventies was crochet. Of course, having never crocheted before, I firmly believed that a Sophie Digard style bag would be well within my capabilities once I’d learnt. How I laugh about that now.
The second thing was this pattern for an owl in a granny square that was doing the rounds on pinterest. I had a yearning to make my beautiful niece something owl-y and crocheted, preferably for her upcoming 3rd birthday.
Plan A was to ask my aunt to teach me. We arranged a date but unfortunate circumstances meant we couldn’t do it as planned but I was psyched. When I mentioned on facebook that I was keen to learn, a lovely friend sent me a link to a youtube video that she had followed when she was getting started, and as I had a hook and some yarn I decided to give it a go.
I was not very good. There was much pausing and rewinding of the video. There was even more frogging (pulling out the stitches) of my work. But by the end of the evening I had produced what I can only describe as a rag. It is fondly known as the dish cloth. I still have it. I posted every step of my evening on facebook, which resulted in the two events that have made me the hooker I am today.
Firstly my aunt took pity on me and made sure I had a face to face lesson by the end of the week. Secondly, I found out that a group of my friends could knit and crochet very well and there were some others that were keen on learning so a facebook group was formed. And these lovely people became my go to people when I wanted help understanding patterns, or was struggling with the difference between dk and 4 ply, or needed recommendations for patterns, tutorials and yarn.
Here is my first tadaa moment. A dolly blanket for my niece’s birthday (only a couple of days late), with Alfie Bear modelling the dishcloth. The wine glass is purely for scale.
I did eventually make her something owlish too
Meet Pinky the Owl. Pinky is a vaguely owl shaped cushion from Issue 57 of Let’s Get Crafting: Knit and Crochet magazine.
So my advice for those wanting to learn how to crochet is this:
Ask a friend who can, to help you. It is amazing how much easier I found it to follow a real life person rather than a video.
Get yourself a crochet community where you can feel comfortable asking questions and for advice, where you can share projects and craft related chit chat. This can be online or in real life. There are some great facebook crochet groups about and they mostly seem full of people who are eager to help each other and share ideas. Instagram is a great source of inspiration. Search a crochet related hashtag and take it from there.
Ask at your lovely local wool shop if they have a knit and natter group. Some have general wooly craft groups, some have special groups just for crocheters. Ask your friends – you never know, you might have a hooking network right on your doorstep.
Join Ravelry.
There are some brilliant blogs and websites about. Here is my list of helpful sites for a crochet newbie:
Attic24 – Lucy’s blog is a rather delightful view of her Yorkshire life. There are beautiful photos of her day to day life, the occasional recipe, and loads and loads of inspirational crochet. I love her very easy to understand patterns and photo step by step guides. An attic 24 ripple or stripy bag or granny stripe blanket seems to be a crocheting rite of passage. She uses UK terminology.
Little Tin Bird– very similar to Lucy Attic . Her free crochet tutorials are great, with brilliant photo guides to basic granny squares, solid grannies and circles in squares. She also uses UK terminology.
Crafty Minx Crochet School – this is an American site and uses US terminology which can be quite confusing when you’re just beginning and are used to UK terms but it wasn’t until I watched the first few crochet school vids that I actually understood how stitches were made, and which part I was meant to be working in.
Bella Coco – I didn’t find youtube videos particularly helpful and was quite overwhelmed by the sheer number of them when I was starting out almost three years ago. I was easily confused by the similarities and differences of the UK and US names for things. The Bella Coco tutorials use UK terms and lots of my friends have found them very helpful.
Get a book with life sized photographs and really clearly written instructions. The Dorling Kindersley Crochet Guides are great though I have found that even though they have different titles the content is pretty much the same. I had this one when I first started. I think it cost me £4 in aldi. The Works often stock the DK crochet books and you can get them from the book people too.
I hope these links help a little if you are thinking of learning. If you know of any sites, books or magazines that really helped you ‘get it’ please let me know and I can add them to my list.
The Crochiating Crow 