Pulling Through

Family has criticized me for doing nothing but knitting all day. Well, now they can rest easy because for the next little while, I'll be crocheting all day! I'm finally putting my sister's gift to use. Honestly, finding a pattern and just trying to figure everything out was pretty confusing at first (once again, thank god for YouTube videos!) Like instead of CO #, which is how you would typically begin in knitting, its Ch #, and then I had to google what sc meant, and then find a video demonstrating to me how to do it. Figuring out how to read a pattern wasn't the hardest part though .. actually figuring out how to crochet was the most difficult. Suddenly, I've been reduced from two needles to one hook, and so managing my grip felt awkward. I do wonder though, how it must feel if a crochet-er suddenly began to learn to knit. For a couple minutes, I couldn't even maneuver the hook to make the first chain. For some reason, I just couldn't pull the hook through the yarn.

After much effort however, here are my first four chains!

 

 Not looking too bad I hope! I do know that my tension is not even for sure, but I'll worry about shaping my skill later. Anyway, after the first couple of chains, I really got the hang of it. So before I knew it, I finished crocheting the amont of chains the pattern called for:

Then I got to the part where I had to start single crocheting. Honestly, I had some trouble with this. In knitting its so obvious which stitch you're going to knit next, but in crochet, I felt like I have to really look to see if I am sc-ing the right loop. Not only that, but I also had issues with fitting that crochet hook through the loop in the first place. I've heard people say that crocheting is a lot faster than knitting, but I think that it definitely will not be the case for me. It took me forever just to get to this point:

 

And as you can see, I'm not even done that row!

 

Well I will just have to keep power through-ing! Hopefully it will all get better the more I crochet!