The First Time I Picked Up A Crochet Hook

The first time I picked up a crochet hook was when I was around 9 years old. That would have put me in the 4th grade. I had a Boye J hook and some random skein of yarn, probably Red Heart, that my Mom gave me. She taught me how to chain stitch, then single crochet and double crochet. That’s all I knew and frankly, I sucked at it. I didn’t know what “frogging” was back then but I did a lot of it. I remember my fingers hurting from trying to pull the yarn through the loop. Why on Earth couldn’t I get the hook through the dang loop? Mom would tell me that the tension was too tight and to loosen the yarn up a bit. My granny squares, well, they weren’t square at all and I didn’t really understand decreasing and increasing, so I’d just sort of make up for it by increasing on the next row with the result being a not so square granny “blob”.

I dropped the hook and said forget it and years later when I was pregnant with my daughter, I desperately wanted to make her a baby blanket. That’s when I learned how to do the ripple stitch and I made her a multi-colored blanket that I have to this day, hoping that one day she would have her own children that I could pass it down to. Still waiting…maybe someday.

Because I didn’t know my baby was a girl, I made the blanket in a unisex color way, so whether baby was a girl or boy I would be able to swaddle that little baby in my first ever hand crocheted blanket. What an amazing feeling that was to hold my newborn baby girl in that oh so soft wonderful little blanket. The blanket was made with a multi-colored baby yarn similar to this Mary Maxim Rainbow Print Baby’s Best Yarn.

My love of crochet became ever apparent after I made that blanket and while I didn’t crochet as much then as I do now, I’ve learned so much over the years and hope you can gain something positive from Crochet Au Lait.

My “baby” will be 30 years old on March 3rd and oh how the time has flown by. Happy birthday my sweet girl.