I was always a bit of a nerd and never spent too much time making crafts. I used to like how amigurumis looked like but the process of learning to crochet and build one of those pieces of art was out of my grasp. They looked beautiful, I dreamed about making them one day but there’s where it ended.
I learned to make chains of crochet and stockinette stitch when I was around ten years old. My mother taught me crochet, but I couldn’t get further than those chains. Double crochet and the rest were too much for me. My grandmother was a handy knitter and I used to wear lots of jackets made by her but the only thing I was able to do at that time was less than half a scarf in stockinette stitch which curled horribly. As I was not achieving any of my goals, I dropped both crafts and never ever tried again for more than twenty years.
I finally started crocheting a bit more than two years ago (I’m already 33, oh my!), and knitting just this summer. And what got me started with both crafts was my niece. She was born 2 Decembers ago, and some months before I started dreaming of making an Afghan blanket for her. But this time I didn’t stop there, I got myself motivated enough and I asked for a little help from Violetazul, the only knitter I knew at that moment. She sent me the link to a pattern and that November I started crocheting. When trying something new, I watched again and again videos from YouTube, in my opinion a great tool to learn any kind of craft.
I remember those charts calculating how many rows I had to make each day before Christmas to have the blanket ready for Christmas. The baby was finally born the 13th of December, but I didn’t travel there until a couple of days before Christmas.
After accomplishing the blanket and surprising several members of my family (my mother took some time to believe that I actually had made that) I decided to explore and try for good to make amigurumis. The first attempts failed. I could get myself motivated enough until I found Super-cute Crochet: Make Your Own Amigurumi Family. I made some of those designs and I felt pretty satisfied.
Some time after that I discovered the group Stitch’n Bitch Brussels, where I met other people addicted to crafts. At the Stitch ‘n Bitch meetings I used to feel kind of jealous becase some of them were talking about things like purl, cable and stockinette and I didn’t have the remote idea of what they were talking about (Spanish terms are different from English ones). After crocheting for some time I always envied how knitted garments look. Crochet is great for small pieces, for blankets, for rugs, but let’s be honest, it doesn’t look wonderful for sweaters or socks. I’ve been secretely planning for months to make a sweater or a jacket and for that I needed knitting; well, I should say that I needed to learn knitting.
I was really-over-super busy the last months, but I needed to learn something new (no, it was not enough with my work, with my Cisco CCNA and my plants). Thanks to a book I had bought some time ago and the essential YouTube, I learned the basic stuff and, after over 20 years without knitting, I finally started to make what I wanted.
This is the first knitted thing I made. I have to say at the first the Stitch ‘n Bitch meeting I brought it, the fact of me switching to knitting drew a big ovation. Again, my niece inspired me to start something new. This was also for her.
My first ever finished knitted garment. Yeah!
And you? How did you start with this addiction?