About 2 weeks ago, I randomly decided to take up crocheting those tiny little adorable animals called animaguri. Turns out that the “Crocheting Animaguri for Complete Beginners” kit (not the real name, by the way) is way too advanced for me. Luckily, the kit came with a crochet hook, so I YouTubed a bunch of super basic crochet tutorials and learned how to start a project and how to do a single crochet stitch using yarn my mom left behind. I think she was going to use it for baby blankets, but I’m sure she won’t mind me co-opting it for my own work.

Crocheting, so far, has been hard enough to learn that I get a bit frustrated and have to take breaks, but easy enough that I can figure some things out on my own. Like why my trial scarf was losing stitches and how to fix it and why my stitches were/are so tight. I still can’t figure out the best way to hold the yarn, but I’m getting there. At first I held it in my right hand but that made it harder than necessary, so I switched to my left, but I haven’t gotten a hang of how to wrap the yarn around my finger(s) and hold the actual project at the same time. I’ve also seen a few different methods of holding the hook, so I’m experimenting with that too.

Two and a half weeks after my spur of the moment decision, and I now have 2 more crochet hooks (I had 3 more, but one of the cats chewed it to Hell), 3 more skeins of yarn, 3 cross-stitch kits, an embroidery kit, and am seriously considering a bag for all my gear. Apparently, I found out I’m okay at crocheting a single type of stitch (and halfway okay at a 2nd), and I decided I’m going to do ALL THE THINGS with needles (craft-wise, obviously, not heroin). Except knitting, which I have taken up a million times in the past and sucked at real, real hard. Then again, I was significantly younger than I am now the last time I tried so maybe I’d be better at it today. I also managed to talk myself out of learning to sew again – that was close, though. I would like to learn to make a quilt at some point. But I managed to convince myself that 3 hobbies (plus blogging again) would be plenty.

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