Stitches are not progressing as planned.
I was able to find the best way for me to make the starting loop. My daughter filmed my efforts as shown in this video.
I expected to struggle with the coordination part, holding the hook, the yarn, the tiny piece of crochet. This video below shows that awkwardness… But the more I stitch the smoother it is becoming.
Because I want to do this right, I have been doing a lot of frogging. Yes, that is correct, frogging.
To frog in crochet is to rip out and undo a project to fix a mistake. Sigoni Macaroni told me on YouTube that frogging is a good thing, because it means you are learning. OK, let’s stay positive and go with that.
I have found many good resources online such as:
This online education program with the Crochet Guild of America which offers synchronous online lessons. There are fees associated with it, however I could see it would be useful if you wanted to learn this way.
The Crochet Coach website. This has been one of my favourite resources. There are fees to use all of her resources but I was able to take advantage of quite a few of the free bite-sized lessons. I find the host light hearted and of course I love listening to her NZ accent.
I have planned to make a dishcloth starting with the very simple single crochet stitch. I liked this TikTok video showing the single crochet stitch as it was very clear where she was inserting the hook. I’m confident now in my ability to make a starting chain and complete the single crochet stitch, I was off and running. In many directions apparently.
I discovered I could not maintain the same number of stitches from row to row! I was adding stitches, I was losing stitches. I have found this to be the most difficult part of the process so far. And I thought holding the hook and yarn was going to be the hard part.
Learning how to recognize where to put the hook and counting stitches has been my focus for many days. I’ve read a lot, I’ve watched many YouTube videos and consulted my PLN. One of the Facebook groups that I joined is fantastic! It has a honest sense of community and the members are quick to offer advice to each other when questions are posted. This has been a big help to me. And I have accepted that, indeed, frogging is part of the process.