Crochet and You – An Introduction to Crochet

CROCHET AND YOU
An Introduction to Crochet

Crochet is a wonderful thing. There is nothing like sitting down with a glass of wine or a cup of coffee and taking something as simple as yarn and weaving it into something wonderful. That makes you a creator. You are basically turning a very long strand of fiber into something glorious. I have had friends, that do not crochet, just marvel at how they looked at the skein of yarn that sat dutifully by my side and watched it slowly evolve into a beautiful scarf or afghan or sweater… Well, you get my drift. Sometimes we overlook how great that really is. All the while, I am chatting away or watching a movie and barely even looking down. Even knowing how to make one single stitch can turn into something beautiful, especially given the fact that crochet is wonderful at designing lacy items…

You can choose how much or how little you invest in it. You can buy a small cheap ball of acrylic yarn and a plastic hook or you can go all out on fancy yarn (the possibilites here are endless) and bamboo hooks. It all really depends on what you want to do with it. Do you want to make doilies? Afghans? Sweaters? Socks? Some people want to do it for one specific purpose, such as making blankets. Others, including myself, want to make anything and everything.

The granny square once looked at as something tired and old, now has so many new possibilities. People are designing all different shapes and sizes and not just using them as a typical afghan square. I have seen them sewn together to make purses, scarves, table runners, anything you can really imagine. One of my favorite quick projects involving the granny square is making an afghan out of basically one huge square instead of sewing a bunch of smaller ones together.

Crochet is a form of therapy. It can be a mindless or mindful thing, depending on the project and difficulty. You can crochet away mindlessly and happily as you watch t.v. or your children’s sports, plays, and whatnot or it can be mindful when you want to drone out the hustle and bustle that modern living has come to be. Multitasking is a way of everyday life and what better way to unwind than to sit down and focus 100% on your crochet project? You can unlock your creative spirit by doing some freeform crochet, where you just take your yarn and hook with no pattern and see where it leads you. Many relate it to painting, with the crochet hook being equivalent to the brush and the yarn equivalent to the paint.

The main stitches in crochet are single crochet, half double crochet, double crochet, and triple (or treble) crochet. There are others, but those are the most common. You can come up with many different pattern combinations just by using those in different variations. You might use a thin yarn and make chains a lot when your object is going to be lacy or use bulky yarn and regular stitches when it is going to be more solid.

You can add embelishments to items and my personal favorite of late is crocheting with beads. I made a few simple patterns for crocheting with beads and they are the Beaded Headband, the V-stitch Headband, and the Quick and Easy Beaded Coaster.

Another popular idea is crocheting with graphs or even cross stitching onto a finished item. There is a special crochet stitch which makes cross stitching onto it an especially good idea, and it is called the Afghan stitch. You use a special hook (it looks like an especially long crochet hook) and it produces stitches that are more square, which makes the cross stitched graph more accurate. Regular single crochet stitches tend to be a tad wider than they are tall.

Once you have acquired a hook and some yarn, I would recommend snuggling up in a big comfy chair with a tall glass of wine and try a basic pattern. One of the worst things you could do is start off with a project that is too daunting and end up frustrated. I would recommend a basic square item such as a dishcloth or scarf.