Intermediator

I’m crocheting away like mad, showing an almost alarming level of dedication to that foofy pink bag I’ve decided to design. From scratch. As a first crochet project. For a pattern I’m going to write.

As I work, I also pause to add to the hectic, out-of-sequence scrawls filling several pages of a little notebook that at least half of the time I actually remember to tuck into my knitting bag. Those cryptic little notes will one day become a pattern.

Nerdy design geek that I am, I’m only a third of the way through the actual bag, and I’m already dreaming of the finished PDF. What will I use for accent colors?, I ask myself. How do I want to shoot the picture for it? And when I look actually look at the notebook to find out how on earth I did that one thing on the other piece that looks like that instead of this, I ask What the fuck is going on here?

There are a lot of scribbles and a lot of little circles with long lines rising from them, and there are things written next to the lines that I think are meant to clarify the mess beneath. They don’t do much about the omissions of little last-minute, “Uh … maybe this will work” adjustments and impromptu increases. (Corners, man. Corners are rough.)

There’s also the difficulty level. I was pretty sure that it’s a beginner pattern — straight lines, no increases, almost all back-and-forth rows — and then I got to the strap and thought “Hmm. Afghan stitch. That looks pretty cool.” It does, too, especially with a variegated yarn with short repeats. It’s such a narrow little strip of crochet that I don’t need the special hook for it, but does it still count as a beginner pattern if you have to learn a whole new kind of technique just to do it?

Not having ever made anything from a crochet pattern, I don’t actually know what a beginning pattern is. I haven’t found a beginner-level pattern that doesn’t make my eyes cross with boredom just looking at it, so making one is out of the question. And I must know what the skill level of the pattern is — how else do I design a really, really cute icon for it?

Update: To hell with Afghan stitch! Curled too much and wouldn’t behave. I may have come up with something cuter, though.

“The only reason to see ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth.” “Alex, that’s ‘What is David Bowie’s junk?’” “Correct!”

Learning to knit was a whole new kind of difficult for me. After a lifetime of being smart enough that I never had to think too hard about anything, and with a knack that let me pick up most crafts within about half an hour (except sewing, which is its own nasty beast), knitting broke my brain, broke my heart and broke my expectations in a hurry. It took weeks of maddened, constant work to get to where I could knit stockinette without thinking about every stitch, and if there’s one thing I was bad it, it was sustained effort and — OK, two things, sustained effort and not taking shortcuts and, well, three things, if you count working hard without an immediate reward and hey, I think that’s a pretty good place to stop counting my flaws, thank you.

It all fell in place while I was watching Adult Swim on Cartoon Network. There’s something about the very mild distraction of TV that lets your brain finally drop purling into your muscle memory instead of the requires furious concentration slot. In that moment, I finally learned how it feels to work hard on something without immediately seeing results, knowing that one day it will come together. It’s an “aha!” moment that I think most people have when they’re about, oh, ten, but just because it took so long in coming doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth it. Finally, at 25, I’d learned how to actually learn something all the way through instead of picking up the easy bits and glossing over the rest.

So compared to knitting, learning to crochet a couple months ago was like taking a warm bath with gentle massage jets and a couple of attendant waiters handing me vodka tonics and asking me questions from the “David Bowie movie trivia from Ziggy Stardust through Everybody Loves Sunshine” and “Finding deformed skulls on eBay” categories of Jeopardy: easy like Sunday morning, baby. I picked up Stoller’s “Happy Hooker: Stitch ‘n’ Bitch Crochet,” a couple dozen thrift-store hooks I’d accrued for 50 cents each and a ball of indestructable, infinitely rippable acrylic yarn, and within an hour I had a neat square of single-, double- and triple-crochet stitches and was already starting on my first filet crochet.

If knitting’s a prissy bitch of a hobby on the uptake, then crochet is the easy, lovable little sister that puts out on the first date and laughs at all my jokes, no matter how stupid they are, and honey, I think I’m in love. I still love knitting to death, but it can get a little overwhelming having to mastermind every detail of a project instead of just winging it.

Now, if only my output were a little more impressive than two bracelets made from old mix tapes that I gave away instead of keeping, I might be on to something …