crochet life lessons
Just recently started to crochet again. To give some background, I've managed to finish several projects throughout the years: a bunch of phone sleeves, a bag, 3 pokeball plushies, a pillowcase, still SLEEVES in a series of different colors and stitch patterns, an enormous scarf - and I've given most of these to someone I love, hoping my love for them is conveyed by every stitch.
Listing what I've done for others makes me reflect on how I've started and maintained this hobby because it became such a convenient source of a gift and an even easier way to let effort materialize through it. To be honest with you, I suck at giving gifts (am working on it) but this stuff I can do! Surprisingly!1
I slowly started to realize that I can't entirely base an entire hobby on my tendency to please other people, right?
So, I wanted to write about this in my hopes of practicing to be a little more selfish and that I might as well redefine how I see doing this...
Starting with declaring that I also do crochet for myself, despite most of my finished stuff being given away. There's product and there's process - the person I give it to gets the product, but I am there in the entire process, involved, challenged and gratified in the end.
And if there's one thing about me is that I LOVE RESULTS. Immediate ones, even more so. So yeah, I'll crochet a beanie for you. It's ok, just pay for the yarn, I don't mind the work, if you must know I'm also doing it for me because it makes me happy.
Crochet is straightforward when you want it to be. Right now, it keeps me up at work when I need to be since I'm on night shift again. The patterns soothe me. I love me a pattern I can get lost in. There's kind of a stage in the tutorials where you really have to pay attention, then it comes to a point where you just do whatever you just did 37 more times.
I love repetition when it's like that. I love seeing the yarn just unravel in real time and turn into something else through it, but sometimes, I struggle at the start or in the middle when I notice that it starts looking less of what I expect it to be. Was that the right stitch to stick my hook in? Did I count the stitches right, etc. etc - these moments of doubt are unavoidable, but if anything, they just teach me to be patient and trust the process.
I've only been working on patterns, and I think it helps particularly because in my mind I am certain there is an end to it. There should be something it should look like. But with all the stitches incrementing, one would and could definitely lost, with how many it is in total and as a whole. So mistakes can be made, but in my experience so far, it's only either of the two:
You've already finished the pattern and the piece and you and only you notices that you're lacking a half-double crochet in row 12.
Early on you can already spot something is not holding or adding up.
Crochet is doing one thing - the act of pulling yarn with a hook - many, many times and only in different ways. From that alone mistakes can either be literally non-existent or just hurled right at your face. Unless I'm mindlessly just doing it, the piece in progress is always under scrutiny and inspection, so when there's anything wrong, just pull the yarn and start from that point on.
Starting over happens to me from time to time. It's okay and I never really felt frustration towards the work or myself. Maybe because it is clear the only way to move forward is to pull the yarn and start again. Literally, what else is there to do? This reminds me of a quote about trains:
If you get on the wrong train, get off at the next station; the longer you stay, the more expensive the return trip will be.
I can't possibly just continue or make a play trying to get around it. And I realize now that when I crochet I am more forgiving of myself when I make mistakes. So with that, I'll give another quote:
Practice makes perfect.
It always feels nice being aware you are doing something healthy and you like it. It always feels nice when you discover something new about yourself. Crochet does that for me. Add all of that on top of me loving that I can do something with my hands. I love that I can ✨create✨. I feel this way because I have never been in my entire life labelled as an artistic person - my school projects can attest to that - but doing this is and makes me feel crafty. And that is something I think is close, or at least closely related.
I didn't mean to say so much about this... Well, nothing to see here !!! Just a girl and her hobby and her realizing it's doing more for her than she thought <3
17 Sep, 2025
There was a time that this fact of me being able to crochet was used at a team-building activity of "guess the person who can do x" and nobody guessed it was me.↩