I gained an interest in crocheting when my mum bought me the Cath Kidston Crochet Book for Christmas which included a crochet hook, a few balls of yarn and an instruction manual. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. The wool is bad quality, there isn't enough of it to complete the project (a granny square cushion) and the written instructions were impossible to work out, not just for someone who has never crocheted before, but even my mum (who has crocheted in the past) couldn't work out the basic stitches from the sketches in the book. I also felt it was also massively overpriced at £20, as you can get a crochet hook for £1-2 on the high street and a huge bundle of wool (not amazing quality but significantly better than those in the kit) for about £1.60 (Wilkinsons, Dunelm Mill and Abakhan Fabrics are my favourite places for wool, but you can also sometimes get cheap yarn in places like The Works). The tin was nice for decoration, until the lid fell off...so yeah.
Ms Octopus knows her shit.
I found the instructions in the Cath Kidston kit stupidly confusing, and so turned to Youtube for some tutorials. Thankfully, Youtube is full to the brim of EVERYTHING and has plenty of excellent crochet tutorials. I wanted to begin with granny squares, and stumbled across the user Bethintx1 who has some brilliant videos covering all sorts of crochet patterns and stitches. I found the tutorial for granny squares particularly good as you can clearly see what she is doing as she crochets, and it's slow enough for someone who has never crocheted before to pick up. After stopping and re watching the videos on granny squares constantly for four hours getting the stitches wrong over and over again, I finally got the hang of it, and I was off! To be fair, I haven't learnt many different stitches since I started, but the more you do it the better you get at getting neater, more even stitches (or I was just a shit beginner crocheter, haha).
Below is part 1 of the granny square tutorial. (The video uses American crochet terminology which is different from the British terminology, in case you want to learn the British terms. They are pretty easy to translate across, I just prefer the American terms as most of the patterns I use are American).
I also wanted to have a go at crocheting some small crochet animals (they are also known as amigurumi) so I found this tuturial on crochet pigs. I won't lie, it was a ridiculous amount of effort, took 8 hours and my first two attempts looked more like deformed bumble bees with legs, but the third one came out quite cute so I wasn't too arsed. Just following that one tutorial was enough to get the jist of written patterns too, which has meant I've been able to create a load of different animals fairly soon after I picked up my crochet hook for the first time.
Ta-daa!
Why you should give crochet a go?
It's ridiculously satisfying, and once you learn the basic stitches (there's only really three or four) you can make most things...I've already made hats, door knob cosys, iPod pouches, cuddly tiny animals! It's all about keeping count of the amount of stitches, and trust me, once you start it's a really easy hobby, plus when I look at the things I've made I think they look so good compared to what I had to do to actually make them. It's a ridiculously rewarding hobby, just requires a lot of time and patience.
Anyway, I'll definitely be posting more about crochet in the near future so keep an eye out! :)
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