Yarn and a Hook: Not As Easy As It Looks

So in my quest to find some hobbies that interest me, I decided to pick up crocheting. Both my grandmother and mother are expert crocheters and have made many a dazzling afghan in their time. I still have the blanket my grandmother crocheted me when I was 10: it's white with green squares with tulips in each square. It's beautiful and I still use it!


My mom gave me 2 hooks and some royal blue acrylic yarn. The book she gave me on basic knitting and crocheting was difficult to follow. I couldn't figure out the instructions for the life of me! So, I do what every girl does when she can't figure out how to do her makeup or exactly how that hair style works: I turned to YouTube. I found lots of how-to videos on crocheting and knitting and picked the top link: Learn How to Crochet Part 1 - Basics For the Absolute Beginner. I'm absolutely a beginner and thought this would be a good place to start.

The video did for me what the book could not: show me in live action how to make the first knot and then make the chain stitch. It even showed a simpler way to make the slip knot that becomes the basis for every stitch. However, it wasn't as easy as it looked. The yarn kept falling off my index finger and I had to keep pulling the yarn through the loop (I think I made it too small to pull the hook through). I'm not a very visual person, so I had to watch and re-watch parts of it several times. Overall it was a very good video and shows you how to make a 20 stitch x 20 stitch square and finish it with a darning needle (which I still need to pick up).

Here's my work so far:

An hour of hard labour

I accidentally made a knot in this one so I started another. I eventually learned how to make the second and subsequent rows, but messed up pretty badly. I spent about 2.5 hours making 6 rows - it was slow going. 

I'm going to bring my crochet work on my camping trip next week to do by the fireside. Hopefully I don't light the whole skein of yarn on fire!