The first time I grabbed a piece of yarn was in a health resort to help me build immunity. I was there with my sister for about 2 months and our grandma came to visit us for a few days. She brought a few skeins of very thin cotton yarn and taught me how to make chains with my hands. I made so many of those in different colors during those few days and tied them up into bracelets and necklaces. Some of them I wore, some of them I gave to my family or friends I made there.
When I was around 10, I found all of those bracelets and necklaces in my drawer and asked my grandma if there is more that I can create from those chains than just bracelets and necklaces. She grabbed a crochet hook, taught me how to make a chain using the hook, not my fingers and then she taught me how to do a single crochet. I made so many squares and rectangles from it; she gave me some yarn to take home with me so that I could crochet at home too.
After a while of playing with the hook and yarn, I figured out how to make a flower using chains and a slip stitch. She never showed me a slip stitch; I just decided that I was bored of making rectangles, so I wanted to make a flower. Since I was 10, it didn’t occur to me that I could use YouTube to learn more, so I tried to figure out how to make a circle to make the center of the flower. I don’t remember if I made my first slip stitch accidentally or on purpose, but I was so proud of myself for figuring it out! I didn’t figure out how to change colors, so all of my flowers were either green, orange, or pink.
When I went to visit my grandma again, she was crocheting little angels as Christmas ornaments. I wanted to learn how to do that too, so she showed me how to do continuous rounds of single crochet. After a while, I got lost in the rounds, put it off and hadn’t picked it up again. I did occasionally make a flower, but that was about it. I slowly stopped crocheting and hadn’t touched my hook for several years. When crochet started to be popular again, I wanted to learn how to do it too, but I didn’t believe I could do it.
So I just kept lurking on all of those crochet accounts, until one day I came across a tutorial for a tube top made out of single crochets. I realized that I can do that, that my grandma taught me enough to do this, I went out, bought a yarn I liked, found my old hook she gave me and tried to crochet my first top ever. Since that day, August 19th, 2023, I knew crochet is something I never want to give up. I loved being able to watch my favorite show while actually being productive. I loved that I could actually create something using just the hook and yarn. That day I fell in love with crocheting and have been crocheting since then.