I’m making another attempt at learning crochet. My mom has tried to teach me, but it’s been a lost cause. I’m right-handed and she’s left-handed (some quick trivia: both my parents are left-handed, but all of the kids are right-handed). She’s clever enough to have somehow taught herself how to do it left-handed, but I’m not bright enough to figure out how to watch her and switch it back again.

I went to my local Chapters and bought Teach Yourself Visually Crocheting. This book is great, every instruction has a picture next to it of what your work should look like. It’s got all kinds of stitches documented in it, as well as a few patterns at the end of the book. I’m a real visual learner – like most people, I expect – and this has been extremely helpful.

Crocheted pieces can look fantastic but only if you have a good pattern and make a good choice of thread/yarn. Otherwise, like with macramé (another hobby of mine), you end up with some chintzy piece of crap. You know what I mean: things that little old ladies make to cover toilet paper rolls (and they think it’s cute if it looks like the bottom half of a dress on a doll…) I’m very picky about this, so after much scrounging on the net, I managed to find some good cheap and free patterns. One of which is for… socks. Ooooo…

Just now, I found a new one, which is stunning, in a brand new crochet magazine. I want it, badly. I’m going to see if I can get the mag locally (I hate waiting for anything), but if not, then I’ll break down and buy it online.

I’m stumbling through the beginning of one of the simplest patterns I found, which is for a small wallet/purse/pouch thing. It’s basic stitches, but you work in the round – which means that, instead of zig-zagging back and forth, you actually flip to work along the opposite side – which is a little confusing at the start of a piece. I am hoping I can get to the point where this will come more naturally, and I think I’ll get there eventually.

It was interesting trying to find appropriate yarn. Places like Wal-Mart tend to carry lots of yucky “regular” yarn – you know, that scratchy stuff some people make sweaters out of – but little else. Mom, as always, knew where to look. There’s this knitting store, which carries pricey-but-fab yarn and thread of all kinds. I walked out with some very soft (“ultra fine” on the label) and easy to work with wool yarn, for around $30, enough for two small projects. As I was leaving, the two women there kept trying to convince me to buy more stuff, which was amusing:

Lady 1: “You know, we’ve got these, and this, oh and this…”

Me: “No, that’s okay, I don’t need it.”

Lady 2: “Oh and there’s…”

Me (to mom): “Run! run!”

Addendum

My visitor logs inform me that at least two poor fellows reached this log entry via querying Google for free crochet patterns for toilet paper. Oh yeah, lovin’ the irony.

Friday, September 8th, 2006 · 11:14am