My new hobbies: learning crochet-3

Your beginnings will seem humble, so prosperous will your future be?
In fact, I dreamed of my first piece in beautiful blue color. Or green would be also fine. Unlike my small plan, as a beginner in this knit atelier, Th-ge-bang didn’t allow me any freedom of expression. When I pointed at a brown crochet bag for my first goal, my teacher sold me the same lumps of brown yarn right away. There was no time to ask her for extra options. Why? Maybe because I was too intimidated to object to her decision. Maybe because my teacher has been used to having passive students who never dare to change the color of their yarns and never considered she should have given me a choice of color.

I was slightly disappointed about such a forced purchase but hardly brave to insist on the color choice. What could be more important than learning basics? No more than a beginner I was. So, I decided to mind my own business with somewhat dissatisfaction at this tedious brown.

After I trained in learning several stitch types, my teacher took one of my brown yarns and tied a slip knot to let me begin my task. At this time, I cautiously added my opinion that I would like to make it narrower and deeper than the original sample. She accepted my idea and made 50 chain stitches which were two-thirds of the length of the original version. The movement of her hands was so fast that a linear spiral surrounding the chain stitches was shaped in the blink of an eye. After certain rounds, she assigned the rest to me. That was the beginning of the long journey started.

I updated my crochet state with whoever I spoke to and found a few shy crocheters. As I met hidden masters of crochet here and there, I came to realize that it was not common to take this long for common crocheting work. There were comprehensive reasons for the delay. The major reason was the material of the yarn. It was made from a coated thin paper sheet, twisted in 2.5-3mm thickness. This thickness was pretty thinner, and so was the head’s diameter of the crochet hook. Meaning, the unit of stitches was smaller and I would put more effort to build numerous crochet stitches. Moreover, because I chose the rigid type of material for crocheting with zero elasticity, I had to build each tiny stitch unit tightly, as if the third little pig built a house of bricks in the story of the three little pigs. The harder the stitches were, the longer it took. Mostly, the other reason for my slow phase was that I wasn’t adept enough to surpass this bad condition.

I shared my process with my grandma. I had seen my grandma’s marvelous hand-crafting works previously but never witnessed how she made one. She was delightfully performing a few stitches of my crocheting piece with familiar hand movements. After that, she checked my hand moves and commented, “You know, you are in an overly ambitious mind with slow-moving fingers.” Well, it was always my pleasure to receive feedback to self-objectify. I deliberately collected and copied useful tips: loosening the force of my fingers; learning how to snap my wrist for energy saving; repeating trials and errors to find the best position of each element in my hands. With respect to repeating, by the way, I gradually found joy in practicing before understanding. I was not accustomed to this sequence but soon, understanding came once my bodies learned their movements thoroughly.

Anyhow, I completed my bag in two months. (Adding an excuse, I was busy with part-time work and forgot to crochet my bag for weeks.) The ladies in Th-ge-bang, who have eagle eyes, recognized the bottom of my crochet was seldom aligned and gradually enhanced to the top. It was embarrassing that the quality spectrum of my work was that obvious but also exciting to complete this bag that contained a story.

Here is my one and only brown bag. In photos, you might discover the curvy shape on the edge. When it comes to the formation of these ripple edges, it was accidentally designed in the middle of work. Both sides were supposed to plan as linear. As soon as the crochet garment started to get concaved and formed a small pocket shape, I was worried the direction of the neck was not perpendicular to the bottom. I got anxious about whether the opening of the bag would shrank by smaller than the width of my iPad. My grandma advised that I could plus several stitches on both sides of the edge while the stitch spiral went forward and reached the rims. I took the advice, expanding and contracting the combination of stitches when my hook arrived at a proper position.

This was a fun way to design and build a creation. I learned the method, not bought the result. Meanwhile, I could have demonstrated my idea, escaping the report-discussion-feedback treadmill.