#Microblog Mondays: Stitching

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

My grandma’s offered to teach me how to knit several times. I’ve always wanted to, but never really actively pursued it. The last thing she made me was a diaper corsage for my baby shower. I still have it. She also knitted me a sweater and hat for Olivia when she was born, but by the time Emelia came along, she wasn’t knitting anymore. My mom never did it as an adult to be able to teach me.

I always knew crocheting was the easier one versus knitting. And with the plethora of YouTube videos out there, I knew I could figure it out, so a few weekends ago while shopping at a kids’ consignment sale, I found a crochet kit for $5.00. Never mind it was for an eleven year old girl. I was bound and determined to do this.

Turns out, that kit was sort of useless, at least in the meantime while I was learning how to do the actual stitches. My friend told me to practice my basic chain stitch over and over until I’ve perfected it and gained the muscle memory. “Don’t move on until you’ve mastered one,” she counseled.

So I went to work, chaining the shit out of this orange ball of yarn we happened to have. Chris used it when his work was putting together a volunteer event to crochet octopuses for NICU babies. Seriously, only click on this article if you’re not on your period or aren’t emotionally unstable like I am because that first picture is exactly what I pictured the end result to be and that makes me think of tiny Emelia and the even tinier babies she was hanging out with in the NICU.

He had his first few sessions awhile back and said it was all women except for him and another guy who was also a NICU dad and when he told me that I burst into tears. Bu then COVID hit and they all found themselves at home and the project was over. At least for my husband who has no clue how to crochet. But I’m thinking about that story now and the two NICU dads in there and am getting choked up all over again. God, I love him.

Anyway, progressively I got better at making more even chains.

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Olivia was chomping at the bit for me to make her the crochet purse included with the kit, but Mama said, Yo, I needs to make mah chains first. There’s no correlation with crocheting and these photos below except that it was taken while I was crocheting—I just think she looks too stinking cute in my mom’s reading glasses.

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I practiced all evening Thursday and into Friday. I’d send a photo to my friend and she’d come back with, You’re getting closer!

So back to my chains I went.

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Until finally, around 10:30 Friday night, I sent her this picture and she said, Grasshopper, you’re read to move on. Or, more or less in those words.

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Olivia was stoked Saturday morning when I supplied her with all my chains.

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I made one more for good measure and then set to work doing the single crochet stitch. I had to watch video after video to get the hang of it, and I have the extra handicap of being left handed. So all the videos I searched for needed to be left handed demonstrations.

But that afternoon, I finished a square for Olivia. It’s definitely not perfect. The bottom I can tell I missed some stitches at the ends. Olivia modeled it beautifully.

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I started in on the double crochet, which I screwed up even more on the edges than the single. I did way more on the top than I did initially so it started doing this rounded thing and I ended up stopping and turning it into a hideous skirt for her Barbie doll.

It’s fun. Actually, I wish I had this hobby during infertility, so I could have focused all that nervous energy into creating awesome things by moving around my fingers. It’s kind of like magic. Uneven magic, but still pretty cool.

I went out yesterday and bought some yarn at a thrift store so I would have something to practice on besides orange. I didn’t intend to turn this into an actual piece, but I did practice switching colors (which didn’t go well) and making a border (which went worse).

Olivia wants me to make her a purple blanket, so that’s the next “practice” piece.

I’ve never felt to impatient to just be good at something.

You can find more of this week’s #MicroblogMondays posts by clicking here.