Tory Tries to Crochet
Me and my mom at Vogue Knitting Live 2018. When I saw this flamingo, I knew I needed to learn how to make a (slightly smaller) version for myself.
I first became interested in learning to crochet the first time I went to Vogue Knitting Live in 2018. My mom and I were roaming the stalls looking to buy more yarn we certainly didn’t need, and we came upon a booth for a pattern book called Edward’s Menagerie. The booth was decorated with the most adorable stuffed animals hung on clear fishing line to look as though they were floating. And to top it off, they had a 10 foot tall flamingo. I made my mom take a picture next to it, and that was the moment I knew I needed to learn to crochet.
Since then, learning to crochet has been my New Year's resolution every year for the past three years. I haven’t made much progress. This year, I hope to change that. If all goes according to plan, I’ll have to come up with a new resolution for 2022 because the first skill I’m chronicling on this blog is crochet!
In the past, it was hard to stick with learning to crochet because I believe it’s really hard to teach yourself how to do something, even when YouTube provides an endless supply of teachers. In the “before times,” (when I had a commute and a busier social calendar) I wasn’t really left with a lot of time or mental energy to sit down and focus on learning a new skill. And if I did have the time, I’d probably choose to knit because it gave me a greater sense of accomplishment. I could just pick up my needles and make something I’d actually wear instead of another practice granny square (or in reality, blue and purple rectangle of awkward length?) that I had no intention of turning into a blanket.
Teaching myself to crochet will be difficult for the same reasons as before, but this time, I will be accountable to you, my readers, and this blog. And luckily for my crochet hooks (but unluckily for just about everything and everyone else), these days I have a lot more time to devote to learning.
Learning to knit was easy. I did so at 12 years old, sitting in the back of my parents car on the way up to Wyndham Mountain to go skiing. It was really the only time I ever felt like leaning to knit because it’s the perfect cozy activity to do while relaxing in the ski lodge after a long day of being out in the cold. My mom would cast on maybe 20 stitches, and I would go back and forth practicing the garter stitch. If I ever made any mistakes, I would just pass the project to the front seat, and it would come back fixed. I don’t know how I would have learned or maintained interest in knitting if she wasn’t there to help.
Learning to crochet will be different. I am living quite far away from my mom, and she herself only learned to crochet a year ago after resisting for the better part of the last decade. (I’m not sure why, but I think she finally gave in and taught herself when a number of her knitting patterns called for crochet embellishments.) I did take a couple of crochet classes at the Lion Brand yarn store in Manhattan back in 2018, but I never really committed the stitches to memory so I’ll be starting afresh this time!
From my past stalled attempts to learn to crochet, I did learn enough about it to be able to compare it to knitting. Knowing what I do about both, I think I would have preferred to learn crochet first. I find knitting to be much more straightforward. And since crochet seems more complicated to me, I’d rather do the harder thing first. Here is why I think knitting is more easier to learn:
With knitting, all the “live” stitches you have to work are on the needle. In crochet, you don’t keep any “live” stitches on your hook. Knitting is very linear: you work all stitches on your needle in last on first off order. And in most cases (assuming you’re not trying to increase stitches) you don’t really mess with anything that isn’t on your needles. When crocheting, you make new stitches by poking your needle through loops, and they don’t necessarily have to be the same loops from your last row. From how I understood it, you can basically create a new stitch from…. anywhere. As someone who appreciates the linear and organized nature of knitting, I found this very overwhelming.
There are only two stitches in knitting: knit and purl, and everything is a variation of those two stitches. After I had been knitting for a while, I would see patterns I liked that looked really complicated, and my mom would say, “Oh that? You could make it.” Every. Single. Time. It didn’t matter what I was looking at, she always said that if I knew how to knit and purl, I could make whatever it was. And she wasn’t wrong! With her encouragement, I ended up making a lot of complicated things I otherwise wouldn’t have attempted, and anything I needed to do always boiled down to a variation of a knit stitch or a purl stitch. With crochet, there are six basic stitches, and I think (according to my research for this post) there are even more that aren’t considered basic? During my past false starts at learning crochet, I had a hard time committing each of them to memory because there are so many. Crochet stitches are also tricky to learn because there are two sets of terminology used to refer to stitches: US and UK terminology. The term “double crochet” means one thing if you’re using a US pattern, and something else entirely if you’re using a UK pattern.
For the above two reasons, I’ve always said that if I could go back and choose, I would’ve picked to learn the more complicated technique (in my opinion, that’s crochet) first. This is of course just a matter of preference, and I know that practice makes progress, regardless of the task at hand. The good news is that there’s no right or wrong order to learn-- if you want to start knitting first, go for it!
And if that didn’t convince you, here are some other reasons why I think it’s worthwhile to learn to crochet, even if you know how to knit:
Crochet projects tend to work up faster than knitting projects because crochet stitches can be quite tall. Sometimes, knitting can be slow going. The size of your knit stitches depends on the size needle you use, the thickness of the yarn, and your tension, but not much else. With crochet, you can use stitches of varying heights, so depending on what you’re making, you may finish projects in less time.
Crochet stitches use about 33% more yarn than knit stitches, but this produces a thicker, warmer fabric. Crocheted hats and scarves may end up being warmer than knitted ones.
It’s easier to make rounded objects or more organic looking shapes which comes in handy when making stuffed animals. Some things just look better when crocheted versus knitted (and vice versa). Stuffed animals, or Amigurumi, is one of those things where crochet has the edge. Amigurumi is the Japanese art of crocheting stuffed and often small yarn creatures. They’re extremely cute and as of right now, the number one thing I can’t wait to do once I get the hang of crochet. Take a look at the snow crocheted leopard that my mom made Mike for Christmas. It would be really hard to achieve the same pear shaped body when knitting!
So, for the upcoming year, I’m going to spend some time teaching myself to crochet. I’ll share the resources I found most helpful, and talk about the challenges I’ve encountered. How will I know when I’ve “mastered” this new skill? The goal I’m setting for myself is to crochet one of the animals in Edward’s Menagerie. Hopefully, in a few week’s time with a bit of dedication and some good YouTube videos, I’ll be able to do just that!