If my mom isn’t sewing, she’s crocheting. At least, that’s what I remember from my childhood. She crocheted everything from our Christmas stockings to afghans to angels and ornaments.

She even crocheted the tree skirt for me. You can’t see it really well, but this is it. The tree skirt she used the thin cotton crochet yarn that you typically see people using for doilies. I believe that this is called Filet crochet.

I’ve been wanting to learn how to crochet because I figure that it would be a lot less cumbersome to do while watching TV with Jay as compared to hauling all of my cross stitching stuff into the family room. Plus, I need a good light when stitching.

I bought some yarn, a couple of hooks, and a Crochet for Dummies book. The only thing that I’ve been doing is practicing single crochet (sc) and double crochet (dc) stitches.

It’s not working out so well.

As you can see, I’ve picked up stitches without realizing it. Each time I turned and started another row of the dc I seem to add another stitch.

So I ripped it all out… and started again. I read the Dummies book and thought that I had figured out what I was doing to cause the added stitches.

I think that I fixed that issue. But now I’m dropping stitches. *Sigh* I have ripped this all out and started over again. I’m not making anything. I’m just practicing. My goal is to be able to make a swatch that is nice and even. I think that I’m going to have to pay a visit to my mom’s and have her sit with me so that she can point out exactly where I’m going wrong and how to fix it.

As soon as I am satisfied with my swatch I want to begin to work on My First Crochet Shawl. I have already purchased this class on Craftsy and watched the lessons, but I need to get my stitches better before I start this one. I figure that since I don’t wear scarves and I have enough afghans already, that a shawl would be a good first project. It said that it is for beginners and it didn’t look too difficult. I am looking forward to beginning this… in what extra time, I don’t know. I guess that I will fit it in somewhere!