My mom and grandmother taught my sisters and me how to crochet. As survival skills go, my mom undoubtedly needed a couple, she had 3 daughters. (This was a few years before my youngest sibling arrived, when there were only three of us) Teaching we three to entertain ourselves with a hobby or two was a survival skill for her as well as for us. With three kids in a small house, it wasn’t hard to realize that you needed to keep minds busy, or the kids would get themselves into trouble. Being one of those youth and spirit filled 3, the amount of realization from my perspective …was well, not so much. First lessons started when I believe I was around 8 or 9 years of age. We were taught as a group, my sister and I but she was left-handed, and I was right. We sat facing teacher as she worked so my sister could mirror her actions. It came fairly naturally to me… put yarn loops on hook and then take them off again to get one stitch. Use that stitch to make blocks…. put spacers between blocks to create a foundation for future rows and the rows build upon each other. I had the basic concept of how this could grow and build in size pretty quickly. The humble granny square, a foundational educating basic in crochet, only uses two basic stitches. Beyond making a foundational loop and ending off when you’ve had enough, you only make two stiches, chains and doubles. Our challenge was supposed to be to work together to create something of the same size so projects could be finished effectively, sounds like a plan doesn’t it. Yes, this was how my twin sister, and I handled the world, as a team. Very soon we realized that we didn’t accomplish task the same way. We tried, but crochet tension is a uniquely personal thing. No two people create needlecraft gauge exactly the same, especially when one is right-handed, and another a lefty. I created fabric tightly while hers was more loosely crafted. There began the enigma of why our works weren’t the same. We thought we were the same in most every way imaginable. We looked the same, sounded the same, thought the same and even finished each other’s sentences.
We were NOT the same. She liked chocolate I liked vanilla, but I had always believed that was just a way to express independence. Diversity was a novelty to me as a child. I grew up thinking having a mirror of myself was normal and that even though most people have to seek out their mirrored person I was special because mine wasn’t a mystery to me. My mirror has been right there beside me from the beginning. It mattered very little to me that crafting made us different. I understood there were going to be perceptible differences between us. Mirrors are always too honest anyway. I still don’t like mirrors to this day.
My crochet journey was meditative and full of tactile focus. I enjoyed the feeling of the hook in my hands and the work even when it was scratchy, it felt oddly familiar and comforting. Making something complex from a continuous strand was something good. We were DIY-er’s. We made pillow covers and tiny medallions from inexpensive scratchy yarn with large hooks and hoped they passed inspection even as much as they helped to pass the time. Most of the time they didn’t and proud work was ripped back and had to be repeated. You were tasked, judged, found wanting, and sent back to work and re work. This pattern repeated until you felt trapped in a bucket or changed. Why did I continue? I was learning to think in a simple, straightforward and linear fashion. I wanted validation that I was handy at something. I wanted to please my mother. This mentality would also cover basic sewing, mending and embroidery for me.
So as it happens when you get older life got busier and took a few turns. The crochet time was replaced with reading, music, study, RPG’s, being social, and learning to like things your friends liked so you had a network outside your family structures. Crochet was put on the back burner but the nature at the very heart of skills is that skills are collectible.
A few years later, after the college experience, and marriage I returned to my quiet time skills. I found myself in a foreign country, unable to work because of structured rules. I learned to adult in new ways being separated from the familiar by an ocean and language. I toyed with cross stich projects as well as simple embroidery. I dabbled in caricature art a bit. I took up computer gaming, because text adventures were cool and mentally stimulating. I practiced my secondary education language skills, giving my time to volunteerism as I studied living abroad within the structures of being a military spouse. It was a whole new world. I loved the Spain years. I was only required to immerse in the culture provisionally, it was safe and comfortable. I met new people, learned new things and had many cultural experiences. We didn’t have a telephone and only limited television. We learned to communicate face to face, through letters, being neighborly and entertain ourselves with self-development thriving in our new environment.
With my free time, I took up crochet again, but I had to source new tools in unfamiliar territory. The people I was surrounded by also knew crochet but not in the same way that I held in my limited experience. I found a new format in doily making. Kind of similar to granny square crochet for pillows and afghans but also kind of not. It used different tools and a different size and gauge of material. Both foreign and familiar it felt completely new in my hands, and I immediately wanted to learn everything about it inside and out. Gone was the scratch of cheap yarn, and the large clunky chunky aluminum hook. It felt free of negativity, and I was able to immerse myself in it completely. This form of crochet used fine steel needles and required much greater accuracy, patterning and focus. It was something that was original to me, all my own. I did not share this with my sisters, it was something just for me. Having said that, my mother was accomplished in thread crochet making large projects like tablecloths, but never taught us to do it.
I found friends who also crocheted in thread and shared their histories, experience and method. I learned that there was a lot to learn about variation of size, style and technique. I was not bound to one conventional way of thinking and I could experiment freely. I will forever be indebted and grateful to those who shared their passion for doily work with me. I felt transformed.
I eagerly crocheted on the couch after work, aerobicizing, pre-dinner prep and while listening to music on cassette. I looked forward to my thread time. People started giving me their partially used and abandoned balls of thread, hooks and patterns, I was overjoyed, because now I had different sizes, colors and projects to study and practice! Crochet provided endless hours of happy stimulation. Crochet was portable. You could put it down, pick it back up and there were magazines with lovely diagrams and written patterns to follow. I shared my love of crochet with friends at work which led to making more new friends. Hobby interests were bridges and pathways leading to lifelong connections in multiple languages. I practiced my second language sharing crochet time. I started to make worldly connections continuing to grow and thrive.
During this time in my life, I devoured everything crochet I could get my hands on. I borrowed books from friends, Xerox copied patterns making collections of things I preferred. I wanted to learn how to make crochet in every way possible, inside, outside, upside and down. I pushed my boundaries. I dove headlong into joining and closures, all the different ways imaginable that stitches could be made and the terminology of thread crochet as a language. My fascination lead me towards publishing. What if I could work in the industry for the rest of my life! I wasn’t a writer, I was an artist with minor and very glitchy clerical skills. For some people crochet design and publishing became a business. Could I be a crochet pattern designer? Coffee Klatch Crochet was my first business concept. I used desktop publishing to create an identity and kept learning, growing and thriving through experience.
I wanted to know how crochet magazines were produced and how those lovely diagrams I followed were created and printed. I started teaching myself to hand draw and write crochet pattern notation in notebooks. I used a kind of abbreviated shorthand to speed up the writing so I could test and revise my ideas as I wrote them down. It was a fulfilling new process. Computers made creating faster and saving ideas easier. I was now able to craft doilies without a pattern. I had a knack and patience for it. I filled whole notebooks with patterns. I could make sketches of ideas and then try to work them out in real life, problem solving them step by step and writing down the ideas that worked and delighted me. What did I know about journaling? Eventually I did have one of my designs published in a magazine. That was a whole new experience but also a validation that I could break into the industry as a new designer. I was a crochet designer now and it was thrilling. I still have those early notebooks filled with my humble beginnings in doily design. You can find my design Pumpkin Patch Doily in the publication A Year of Doilies – Book #4, look at the October design page. I love to pour over my old journals reading the shorthand in the same way other enjoyed photo albums. The way you communicate your ideas through the shorthand changes with times does as does the terminology. Each generation evolves in new understanding and practices. With the advent of the internet, Pinterest and social media things became more visual. Now you discover, learn and share things by taking a photo and posting it openly upon the world’s stage.
I hope that magazines don’t completely disappear. Print media is still easier on the tired eyes of an aging needle crafter than looking at a back lit screen. However, I will say I do like being able to zoom into a diagram on my phone or tablet when I have to count stitches. Convenience and instant gratification change the world fairly rapidly. I hope people don’t forget to take time to do some things in slow methodical ways, like reading a good book in print, drawing a picture with pencil on paper or bridging the gaps through sharing or just talking. Who taught you to Crochet and what’s your story?
Gr8♡full Spirit ღ Gr8♡full-♡ 