Mutations in crochet

After a day of intensive tutoring I came home armed with a hook and the determination to crochet.

In my first blog I wrote about my pieces of knotted string and the disaster of working with wool. After a great deal of practise it got better, but there were many disasters along the way.

Every evening I sat watching television with my boyfriend (now husband) who used to giggle and say “hooky hook” in the style of the Radox men’s shower gel advert on television.

After a week I managed to produce something moderately acceptable.

After a week of practise.

I know it’s not exactly great but it is an improvement on my first piece.

As I felt a little more comfortable with the hook – I discovered I’m a knife rather than a pen style holder – and decided to have a bash at crochet in the round.

My first piece of work I described as a “mutant drop scone”. I hadn’t read any instructions so it’s no wonder it looked rather odd.

Note the spiral quality of a piece by someone who can’t work out where a round begins.

I gave this as a gift to my colleague Elaine. Sadly it died in an office fire, but at least we know it was loved.

The second mutant drop scone was a little more solid in the middle but the edge had a wonky quality.

I should make it clear at this point I hadn’t used a pattern. Karen had explained how to read a pattern, both written and visual, but I didn’t have any.

However, this all changed once my book arrived. Karen used Claire Bojczuk’s Crochet Unravelled: A Clear and Concise Guide to Learning Crochet as the basis of her lessons. My copy arrived and I was off (I love this book so much I bought a copy for my mother).

I started off with the basic granny square pattern. I became a little distracted and it went a bit wonky.

However, this meant I learned how to create a centre in the round!

This transformed my next circular creation. Finally I had something that looked a little more like proper crochet.

It still looks like a drop scone, but I had made it up and didn’t count stitches or anything like that.

I confess I’m still rubbish at counting stitches but I am getting better.

Here comes the big unveiling. After three weeks of hard work I managed to produce an okay granny square.

The quality of my stitches improved, too.

Let us compare that first piece of knotted string with a block of double crochet after practise.

A marked difference for sure.

About these ads