The History of my Crafting

Most everything I've learned about the fiber arts, I've gleaned from the internet.  I consider myself mostly self taught.  Grandma tried to show me how to knit when I was young, but I just didn't take to it.  Then, when I was about ten, my cousin was living with us for a while and she was making an afghan.  I remember it was blue and white and she was crocheting it.  I idolized my cousin and I wanted to do it, too.  She taught me the single crochet.  But even then, as much as I liked it, I didn't really get into it.  When I was in high school, I started working on another blanket with all this yellow yarn I had.  But it pretty much languished until I was a junior in college.  I finally finished it then.  I taught a few other people the basics and I knew how to read a pattern.

When I was 23, I lived on my own for the first time without the cushion of dorm life.  I found Lion Brand Homespun and bought blue and white and crocheted an afghan.  Sort of.  Its way too long and not nearly wide enough.  The ends are completely uneven as I lost stitches and gained new ones.  I never even bothered to weave in the tail ends.  I had no idea what I was doing; I just sort of made it up as I went along.

And then I moved back to my home town and I decided I was going to take up the craft with purpose.  I took a free pattern off the wall and I bought the yarn and I made an afghan.  Again, I thought I knew what I was doing but I didn't really.  I lost stitches, unintentionally skipping some between the ripples.  I did half doubles where there should have been singles because, at the time, I didn't know the difference.  But by the time I got to the end of the pattern, by the time I'd completed the whole thing, I had it all figured out.  I knew what I was doing.  And as they say, practice makes perfect.

Soon, crocheting was not enough.  But I got frustrated beyond belief when I tried to knit.  It was slow and my stitches weren't even and purling was a bitch!  When I learned the Portuguese style of knitting, it was a resounding relief.  I could finally knit, just like I wanted to, and it didn't look like rubbish. I've heard from more than one person that knitters often take up crocheting, but it very rarely happens the other way around.  What can I say?  I like to be different.

Yarn has dominated my life for quite a while now.  The satisfaction of completing a project?  Nothing can compare to that.  Yes, I like the accolades I receive.  But it's the internal rush of a job well done that makes me the happiest.  I still have that moment in every project where I'm tired of doing it and I just want it done!  But there is something so soothing, so calming, about crafting something wonderful with nothing more than a strand of yarn and a hook or needle.

One day, I will be old and arthritic and my hands will no longer do what I want them to do.  When, that day comes, when I am no longer able to feed my creative soul, there will be a part of me that mourns the loss.  But until that day, I will do all that I can to overfeed my soul with the fiber arts.

And remember to take pictures.