Bingo 5: Adulthood
So I’m taking the ‘adulthood’ square as in the sense of ‘adulting’. There area few skills that I’ve long kind of wanted to master or at least gain competence in that might fall under this category, including learning to crochet. I learned how to knit in college out of a book (my grandmother tried to teach me as a kid but I don’t think I was really interested at the time), so now I’m coming back to the single needle again. I’ve tried to learn to crochet before and it just hasn’t’ stuck; I’ve heard that whichever one you learn first always seems easier and most people really only take to either knitting or crochet, but I’m trying again. I was a tad bored on a recent trip, wandered into a store that had a decent book selection for not being a complete bookstore and found A Little Course in Crochet. It had the right pictures and explanations that made this look really do-able so naturally I had to go find a cheap crochet hook and some yarn; maybe this could even be something for the long plane ride home (8+ hours).
There’s info on different types of yarns and what each one is and what each one is best for, as well as actual explanations of how to read crochet patterns, both the symbol and abbreviation ones. The rest of the book is set up with both picture and word instructions, and it’s all organized to build skills towards projects and then adding on. So once you get the slip knot, chain stich, double stich, and slip stich techniques, you get to making a washcloth. Then you get the technique for half treble crochet, seam joining, and then the pattern for a phone cover. The rest of the book continues this way. For me, the combo of detailed pictures and words are what looks most promising; most intro books either lean to far one way or the other, and I can’t quite figure out which is the ‘first chain’ that I need to work into, and things like that.
I’ve gotten practiced enough with knitting that I’ve been able to make a me-sized cable knit sweater; what I’d like to be able to do with crochet is a granny square blanket; it’s pretty basic and old-school, but for some reason, that’s the thing I’ve kind of wanted to be able to do, so I’m hoping now I’ll be able to work that out. That and socks; I’ve always wanted to do my own yarn socks, but I’ve never been able to master knitting in the round, so maybe I’ll have better luck with crochet. We’ll have to wait and see.