My First Crochet Stitch

A little history of crochet and how I started.

As I was scrolling through YouTube trying to find something interesting I could do to waste some time, I came across crocheting. I spent some time looking at crochet patterns and projects other people made: turtles, beanies, and pouches. I thought it was really cool and I started to dig in more.

When I was researching crochet, I found out that it wasn’t called ‘crochet’ at first. They called it ‘nun’s lace’ and ‘chain lace’. They only started to call it the name ‘crochet’ in the early 19th century when people started to publish patterns with the term, ‘crochet’. 

Digging deeper, it became much more fun to learn about. I started to question where amigurumi started and how it kicked off since most of my crochet projects are amigurumi's.

Photo credit: Yunseo Jeong

Amigurumi are stuffed yarn creatures that are usually made by crochet but also sometimes by knitting. Amigurumi was known in Japan for several decades and then, they started to appeal in other countries in the 2000s. When I researched these new facts, I was surprised about how much history crochet had. 

Crocheting has been a hobby of mine for 3 years. I first got into crochet through my friends who also liked crochet. One of the crochet projects that made me interested was the amigurumi octopus. As my friends made projects and gave me some, I started to think about how it would be very cool if I learned how to crochet. 

When I first started I used Youtube to practice chains, double crochet and single crochet. After a while, I got the hang of it which made me able to start reading patterns and to start making amigurumi’s. When I started to do better, I made crochet keychains or amigurumi’s that I gave my friends. One of my favorite projects I made was a teddy bear which I thought was really good and it showed how much I improved over time. 

Photo credit: Yunseo Jeong

If you want to start crochet, I have three pieces of advice for you. First, start with easy crochet projects rather than going right into amigurumi's. Another piece of advice would be to not use fluffy yarn and start with acrylic yarn since it is easier to see your own stitches. One last tip is to keep your stitches pretty loose so it will be easier to crochet into. 

Links

https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.crochet.org/resource/resmgr/pdf/history-of-crochet-rm.pdf