Crocheting a Childhood Memory Back Together

Sometimes letting go is the way to grow

My brain likes novelty, which is an eternal challenge because my budget does not. Investing in a hobby and the tools needed to succeed in it usually works out in the end but when your hobby is trying a new hobby, it really stacks up.

So, I have a new rule for myself.

Before I buy any new tools, I have to view at least 3–5 Youtube videos to see what the craft looks like and whether I truly have the patience for it. I also have to try my best to approximate the experience.

When my brain, thirsty for novelty, yearned towards fiber art recently, this is what happened.

What is Fiber Art?

When I say fiber art, I really mean anything to do with fabric and/or fibers. This usually refers to embroidery, knitting or crocheting.

I tried embroidery a while back and still have an ugly, unfinished project that I’ve abandoned, so I quickly scratched that off the list.

Knitting and crocheting seemed like some classic hobbies I could get into.

Knitting with Chopsticks?

Before I dropped $20 on some knitting needles that will sit sadly beside my abandoned embroidery project, I committed to my rule of “trying out” a hobby before diving into it.

Normally, this may have involved showing up at a local crafts event and borrowing some tools, but we’re still under lockdown, so creativity was in order.

Being someone who owns at least three kinds of chopsticks, each serving unique and different purposes in my life, I thought it would be easy to spare a pair for craft projects.

I found the pointiest chopstick that I have, knowing that knitting needles have a pointed end and a stopper end. This ended up being a set of bamboo chopsticks I have, which had a wider base and pointier tip.

To create a makeshift stopper, I wrapped a few elastic bands to the wider end to create a ridge. The rubber of the elastic bands theoretically would provide additional grip to prevent the stitches from sliding off.

It Kind of Worked, Kind of Didn’t

Considering how I slapped all of these ingredients together, it amazingly kind of worked? I was able to follow a Youtube tutorial and stitch a few rows of the pearl stitch.

The one downside is that despite my efforts choosing the pointiest chopsticks I owned, they were still rather thick at the pointy tip and made it hard to slip into the stitches. This makes a lot of sense — pointy chopsticks make for a dangerous eating hazard. We don’t place knives in our mouths after all.

While I liked the feel of knitting, I realized that the yarn I already had lying around my house was a bit lighter than beginners should experiment with. The Youtube tutorials I was consulting recommended at least medium-weight or heavier.

It really showed in my stitches too — the thinner weight meant it was so much clearer when stitches were uneven. And so, with the same fate as my half-embroidered Totoro, I set aside my two lines of knitting.

But that’s not the end of the adventure. I’m not a quitter.

Remembering How to Crochet

Putting my knitting aside, I wondered if crocheting with the lighter yarn might work. I had some experience with crocheting after all, so it wouldn’t be starting out a new hobby on challenge mode, with challenge yarn.

That’s what I thought, at least.

We really have to examine what I mean by “experience” here.

On the one hand, you could argue that I have no experience. I learned how to crochet at a cousin’s house, when my aunt babysat me for 2–3 hours. I was 8. I am 27. That’s almost two decades! It’s just as good as no experience.

On the other hand, both crocheting and knitting were more about muscle memory. They say that even if you don’t ride your bike for several years, you still know how to ride your bike due to muscle memory. I can’t verify this statement as I never learned how to bike. And before you jump in to say that it’s just like swimming, I can’t do that, either.

So I’ve never truly tested this theory. I’ve learned it in psychology classes so surely, it must have some degree of truth, but I’ve never really experienced it.

I was pretty upset to realize that it really didn’t work out for me. I tried for about an hour to crochet along with some Youtube tutorial.

It didn’t work.

I played the Youtube tutorial again but at half speed.

It still didn’t work.

A Plot Twist?

After what felt like fifteen years (but realistically estimated to be 15 minutes), I gave up. I knew it took practice to get into the habit of crocheting, and fifteen minutes wasn’t going to cut it.

I threw on some Grey’s Anatomy in the background and started practicing. At first, I was concentrating on crocheting, trying to replicate what I’d seen in the Youtube tutorials.

But, Grey’s Anatomy is an intriguing show. There’s blood and there are guts, and there’s sudden romance and (spoilers) sudden deaths. It’s so easy to get engrossed in this TV show.

But something wild happened.

I was entirely engrossed in the plotline of the episode, thinking that I’d eventually give up on crocheting and put it away once the episode got juicy.

Sure, yes, many wild things happened in the plotline of that episode, but wilder things happened in my life: I was crocheting without looking. And I was doing it well.

Turns out, with muscle memory, you can get to a point where putting too much pressure on remembering exactly how you did something can have hiccups. And I knew this. It’s happened to me when performing music pieces I’d done a million times and getting frozen in the middle because I became too conscious.

Turns out, what I needed was to not look at my crocheting and just let my fingers play out their pre-programmed dance.

Turns out, I had it in me all this time.

I’m Still Starting Small, but I’m Aiming Big

Right now, I’m focused on bolstering that muscle memory. I may remember the motions of crocheting but I’m now learning that I’m prone to skipping stitches.

I’m starting small, working towards knitting a really long rectangle to ensure that I’m not missing any stitches nor adding them accidentally. Those become painfully obvious when you’re working with rows that are supposed to be identical.

You may argue that a rectangle piece of crocheted yarn is called a scarf. I could argue back: no one I’ve pitched gifting this to (myself included) has agreed to wear it, so it remains an undesired, unwearable rectangle.

Someday, though, I hope to master this art of crocheting and create beautiful pieces beyond rectangles. My biggest dream is to try amigurumis (crocheted plushies) or cardigans.

Doug Keeports’s piece really inspired this story, with his interesting reprisal of knitting woven into his storytelling:

So I like to think someday again that one of those knitters may grab the two pieces of my torn yarn and tie the ends back together, or maybe they will try poking a new hole in some new fault line and run through it a new color. by Doug Keeports

Perhaps there is a parallel metaphor to pull out for crocheting: of somehow pulling loops graciously through previous hoops, instead of making knots?

Rather than a narrative of creating unique stitches one step at a time, crocheting requires building upon previous established hoops — building on the experience and structure of previous crocheted hoops.

The downside of crocheting is that this dependency can be unraveled by snipping the piece at any point, the way that paying direct attention unraveled the hours of experience I’ve had with crocheting.

The metaphor isn’t as elegant, but it was a good reflection!

What about you? What hobbies have you been trying out and what have they unearthed in you?