Close to fifteen years ago, I found myself a seething ball of stress…more so than my usual. It was a particularly cold and snowy winter and I was naturally spending inordinate amounts of time indoors…seething and stressing. I began looking for new stress-relievers as neither reading nor my Netflix delivery queue (this was 15 years ago!) were cutting it.

During a random Google search I happened upon a PDF of crochet basics. With nothing to lose, I printed the doc, went to my local Michaels for basic supplies and set about teaching myself how to hook. I almost quit immediately. I couldn’t figure out how to hold the hook, how to grab the yarn and the single crochet stitch made no sense to me whatsoever.

This was well before the social media crafting explosion we’ve seen in recent years. Ravelry was an mere inchoate idea, YouTube was a just burgeoning platform and the horror show that is Twitter had not yet infested all of American culture. Learning how to crochet on one’s own was tricky.. but I persevered.

I’m so grateful that I did not give up during that winter. Over the years crochet has become an important extension of myself. Not only does it provide a meditative, stress-relieving pastime but it also allows me to actually create a thing for others, something thoughtful and warm, long-lasting and tangible. There is nothing more satisfying that receiving a photo of a friend wrapped in a BK Original.

I was never an arty person; crochet has become my creative outlet and it encourages me to work on patience and to practice being present. The delay of gratification is built in as most of my projects tend to be afghans and queen-sized blankets. For me, planning a project and choosing yarn are nearly as fun and as exciting as watching NCCA Volleyball on TV, which is saying quite a bit.

Today, Ravelry boasts over 8 million users. You can learn new stitches and techniques on dozens of YouTube channels. Etsy allows the crafty to turn their passions into currency. And now, every yarn fanatic from Sydney to Sheboygan has a blog about their patterns and projects. Welcome to my bandwagon-jumping, market-saturating blog. More on my journey to come…I hope you’ll enjoy the ride.