I'm hooked....

Long term readers will know that I am prone to 'enthusiasms' in various guises.  Earlier this year I embraced dressmaking, with mixed success.  I always have various craft projects in progress... for example I'm just about to experiment with mandala dot painting, which is supposed to endgender a calm and meditative state. 

*cough*

I'm reasonably proficient in lots of different crafts, but the one I have NEVER been able to master, despite multiple attempts over many years is crochet.

I think I'm quite a good knitter.  I can decipher complicated patterns. I can knit Arran, Fair Isle, Intarsia etc.  My grannie taught me when I was quite young and I took to it straight away.  She also tried to teach me to crochet but I could never do it.  A simple chain, yes, but anything more elaborate completely escaped me. 

It doesn't help that I'm left handed.  However, for some weird reason, I simply cannot get my head around crocheting with my left hand.

Last month I decided to tackle my inability to crochet and watched eleventy hundred You Tube videos on simple crochet for beginners.  I bought a cheap set of crochet hooks from Amazon and using wool from my knitting stash, spent many infuriating hours trying to get further than a simple chain.  I decided to make a granny square, which seems to be a common goal for newbie hookers.

There followed many more frustrating hours, laboriously hooking double and treble clusters, always ending in having to rip it all out and start again.  But at one point, something  miraculously'clicked' and I suddenly understood what I was trying to do.  My first granny square was hardly a triumph.  It was riddled with mistakes and was only nominally square, but I felt as though I'd conquered Everest.

A week later I'd bought a pack of yarn to make a granny square blanket like this....

That's 100 squares using 18 different colours, plus the border.  

Too ambitious for a fledgling hooker?  Time will tell, although I'm already on square no. 37 so not too shabby. 

TBC.....