Crochet. Most of you will have heard about this before, as the craft is currently having a substantial boom period. Queer people in particular have taken a shine to the process of making clothing, household items and cuddly toys from yarn.
What is Crochet?
Crochet is very much like knitting, but the main difference as you can see is that crochet uses a “hook” instead of two needles. You can then use this hook to loop yarn around and create your items. Sounds easy right?
There are several different types of crochet: Common Crochet, Amigurumi Crochet, Tunisian Crochet, and Irish crochet are among the most common, but there are many others out there as well, and subcategories and so on and so forth. For this article I will be focusing on Common Crochet.
The history of crochet goes back hundreds of years, although it looked a bit different from how it appears today. Crochet similar to modern crochet first appeared in europe in the 19th century.
Crocheted lace became immensely popular in the early 20th century as well. Patterns like granny squares became popular in the 70’s and the whole craft has had an explosion of popularity over the last 10 – 15 years.
How did I discover crochet?
I took up crochet after going on several dates with a woman who had recently taken up knitting. When I first went back to her flat she took great pride in showing me the scarves that she had made following different patterns as well as all the yarn that she had, waiting to use for her next idea.
At first I wasn’t sold on the idea, I had a sudden flashback to being sat down with my grandmother when I was around twelve, and painstakingly explained how to knit one, perl one. Needless to say, I didn’t stick it out.
But as she spoke about knitting one of the things that struck me was that she loved to do it while watching tv or films as something to keep her hands busy. As a chronic fiddler myself I understood.
I didn’t like the idea of trying knitting again, so I did some searching, and discovered crochet. I knew of it before, but I had assumed it to be far more complicated than knitting, but according to the reddit thread I was reading no, actually it was no more complicated or actually even easier.
Fantastic. I immediately went to amazon and purchased a beginners crochet kit for around £25. It was time to give it a go.
How did I get started with crochet?
As soon as my crochet kit arrived I unpacked it and was immediately overwhelmed. I had scissors, yarn, tape measures, some strange plastic safety pins, a big pink plastic needle, about ten balls of yarn and many different sized hooks. Where on earth did I need to begin?
I started like everyone else does. By heading to YouTube!
I found Bella Coco’s channel very helpful for going through the real basics. I watched tutorials about how to make slip knots, how to make a basic chain, and how to do a single crochet stitch.
Being the slightly arrogant person that I am, I then decided that that was all I needed to watch before giving it a go myself.
My first attempts were, to put it mildly, not good. They were lumpy, uneven, and just pulled apart when you so much as blew on them.
The thing I was finding most difficult was working out where to insert my hook into what I had already done to make the next stitch.
Eventually I got the hang of this, and was able to make one, small, blue, square. It was still a bit misshapen, and not useful for anything but I had done it. I decided to move on to tackling working in the round.
To work in the round, you can either make a small chain and loop that together, or you can create something called a magic ring, or magic circle. This. Changed. Everything.
The magic circle is an initial loop you make your stitches in, then you can pull it tight and it creates a tight little circle! Honestly it really is magic.
What I did once I had the basics of crochet:
Working in the round was amazing. I don’t know why exactly, but I found it really satisfying. I quickly created several little coasters out of white yarn (hindsight is 20/20, white was a terrible colour choice they immediately got stained with tea, coffee, and red wine don’t do this)
Then I set about my big project for my month of crochet.
My “big” project. At the end of the month, my mum was getting married. It was a quiet early morning ceremony with only a few friends there. I decided to use my newly found crochet skills to good use to plan a little surprise for them.
I decided to make loads of hearts and use them as decoration throughout my mum’s house so that when they returned, their house would be decorated with tiny crochet hearts!
The plan worked out brilliantly, I ended up making close to 100 small hearts, attached them all to some string, and got them all around their living room in about 15 minutes. It was great. Month of crochet complete!
I have continued to crochet since that month and I have now been doing it for close to a year. In that time I have tried my hand at all different things.
I have made a cardigan, a waistcoat, gloves, hats (and one witch hat), scrunchies, bookmarks, blankets, and even storage bowls as gifts. I’m not always the neatest or the best crocheter, but I am always enjoying myself.
If you’re interested in seeing the full collection of what I’ve made, head over to the gallery.
Tips, Tricks, and Links
Youtube Videos:
Find yourself a good youtube channel to follow at the beginning. I love BellaCoco, but there are plenty out there so if she doesn’t work for you, don’t be disheartened.
Patterns:
Once I knew the basics, I used a site called lovecrafts for both my yarn and pattern shopping. They have thousands of free pdfs of patterns on there and let you sort by difficulty as well which is amazing.
Stitch Markers:
The thing that took me a long time to use but then became an essential was stitch markers.
These are amazing for keeping count of how many stitches you’ve done, marking the start if you’re working in the round, and most importantly, saving your place when you need to stop!
Honestly I’m ashamed of how long I went, getting frustrated with having to re-do my last few stitches because they had unravelled. Please. Save yourself from this. Use stitch markers.
Crochet Hooks:
Once I’d been going for a while I invested in some larger crochet hooks. This was incredible. I bought a set of prym crochet hooks.
I love their design and the handle is just so comfortable, it really allowed me to spend as much time as possible crocheting and never noticing my hand or wrist getting sore.
If you struggle with arthritis or get sore hands quickly, I also saw an ingenious trick of sticking your hook through a tennis ball. It was a bit too clunky for me but works like a charm for some people.
Summary and Score
Crochet is fairly accessible as a newcomer, and becoming more so as the library of tools and help out there continues to expand. The language can be a bit daunting at first as well, but I found just learning US terms for everything.
The biggest barrier to maintaining this as a longstanding hobby is the cost of yarn.
While it is possible to buy some yarns relatively cheaply, if you are making bigger projects it takes a lot of wool, and it’s very easy for the price to creep up as well.
However if you don’t mind being patient and resourceful, I found that hunting discounted sales was an easy way to bring down that cost somewhat.
Crochet has also got great potential to skill up and make some amazing things. A quick trip to r/crochet can reveal just how many incredible projects you can make with just a hook, some yarn, and some patience.
So there is a huge potential to expand your skills. However I quickly found this was too complicated for my brain to keep working on. Instead I switched to simple repeating patterns, and I’m still having so much fun and making incredible things.
I found it very easy to find patterns or think of ideas for things that I wanted to make, that didn’t involve pages and pages of instructions.
Budget friendly: 2 out of 5.
It’s possible to do this cheaply but it does require constant purchases.
Accessibility: 4 out of 5.
There are lots of varieties and alterations that can be made to help more people be able to take part.
Satisfaction: 5 out of 5
It’s a wonderful feeling when you finish a project and just get to sit back and admire it. It’s also calming to do and really helps me to unwind.
Growth and Development: 5 out of 5.
It’s a wonderful skill to learn new things to discover or experiment with every day.
Overall score: 16 out of 20.
I am very impressed with crochet, both in how easy it can be and what I could make with it. If you have the means and the time, I urge you to give it a go.
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