Crotch-It Mind Tricks

So Ive been a Crochet hook owner for 10 days.... I bought 2 hooks and 2 sets of knitting needles for 50p from a charity shop, then a ball of shaded dk yarn for 55p at another charity shop and thought rightio Il give this a whirl....

Ive been saying for over a year that Id love to learn to crochet, but Ive never had the time to actually get round to it, well I stole some time and its AWESOME FUN!

Ive taught myself using youtube videos, learning the stitches as I needed them... Ive watched quite a few diff videos for each stitch til I found the ones that made the most sense to me :) So far Ive learnt chain,  single, double, increase, decrease, slipnots, magic circles, cinching and binding off  :) I can now crochet in a round which is used for Amigurumi (cute animals etc) and have started to learn the traditional straight liney type stuff.

So why crochet? Well... I love the fact that you can take a ball of wool and turn it into something completely different. I have a friend who makes FABULOUS crochet characters AliTheAlien Crochet and she sent me a surprise crochet Hoonie for my birthday  - which was super kind, but even better that it was designed by her daughter who I had made a memory hoonie for ;)

The other cool thing about crochet is that if you make a mistake you can just unravel and start again... I have MAJOR issues cutting into the scrummiest bits in my fabric stash bcos if you cut it wrong its wasted, theres no going back... I like the margin for error in crochet... which is good cos my brain likes to trick me...!

Crochet requires a LOT of counting, and as alot of the stitches require more that one action sometimes your brain can play tricks on you... telling you you have done 2 stitches when in fact only one. So I had to devise a way to make my brain comprehend whats going on... to make it behave. I have to break down each row, so that I have each stitch mapped out and can cross them off as I go esp where increases and decreases are concerned LOL. So I end up with something like this....

Esp handy if you have to pick up and put down your crochet because of interruptions - cos then you know exactly where you are when you pick it up again, and your less likely to make a mistake too :)

So anyhooo I did a few plain old rows and thought... boring! I started to look for amigurumi patterns and found a cool website called Ravelry :) I signed up and started to have a butchers.... WOAH theres loads of FREE patterns and its fabby... and I found this pattern of yummification... Hermione The Unicorn By Dawn Toussaint

Copyright Dawn Toussaint

So thats what I am attempting to make... probably jumping in at the deep end just a little bit.... BUT its forced me to learn diff things as I go so its been a fabby project so far! And heres how far I am into it with my 55p ball of yarn :)

Its not perfect - I made a mistake with the magic circle at the begining of the head... but other than that I am pretty darn chuffed with it :)

So what other stuff have I made so far... well I stumbled across an awesome blog Attic 24 seriously you have to go look at this blog... Lucy is a frikking genius, the colors and the designs are just breathtaking... shes taken crochet and made it seriously COOL! Its like a world of rainbows and color explosions!!! Now I know another fabulous lady who is seriously into her bright colors and rainbows of yummyness and thats Kitty Pinkstars! She got a new hammy this week after her sidekick Ethel went over the rainbow with the hammy angels :( I thought oooooh what a way to welcome Walter! And soo I got out some yummy colors and made Walter some Mini Bunting for his cage :) (click on the attic24 linky above for the pattern)

This is Walter - how sweet is he :) I hope he hearts his bunting :) Pop by Kitty Pinkstars fbook page to see more things about him and also check out Kittys yummy makes!!!!!

So there we go the weeks adventures in Crochet... or as I like to call it Crotch-it  :)