When I was in middle school, I tried to learn how to crochet. I knew how to knit already, so I figured ‘how hard could it be’ and used my Christmas money on a brand new set of aluminum hooks and a how-to book.
To say it was difficult was an understatement. I spent hours pouring over my book, begging to gain some inkling of understanding from what felt like incomprehensible runes. My reward? One lopsided trapezoid of lumpy fabric and a resolve to never pick up a crochet hook again.
And so life went on, I finished middle school and high school without giving crochet so much as a second glance. In college, I read about how crochet couldn’t be replicated by a machine, it was unique in a way that knitting and many other fiber arts weren’t.
For Christmas last year, my girlfriend gave me what I now consider to be my most prized possession: a crocheted plush of my favorite pokemon. I raved over her skills and, since she never learned how to knit, we decided to have a yarn date at some point and teach each other our respective skills.
We never did get around to that yarn date. She passed a few months after our declaration, leaving me to inherit what was left of her yarn.
Nearly a decade after my initial attempt, I got ready for the toughest battle of my life. My weapons? One skein of yarn, a YouTube video, and a crochet hook that I had somehow never gotten rid of.
I slowly made my way through the video, redoing my work a couple times until I was satisfied with my product: a small, slightly misshapen rectangle.
I looked at my pristinely-made pokemon plush with hope for the first time in months and thought to myself, ‘maybe crocheting isn’t the hardest thing in the world, maybe you were just 12.’
Maybe this isn’t the hardest thing in the world. Maybe I’m just 21.