It’s taken me about an hour to crochet a single chain of 20 stitches. That’s not good, is it? Even for a beginner. Things had better improve.

I looked up the instructions in Stitch ‘n Bitch (review to follow, as I was sure I’d already written about it here, but looking through the archives it seems I haven’t) and a few sites online. I’d been fired up by the discovery of enough yarn and old needles in my grandmother’s knitting bags yesterday to give it a go.

They made it look oh so, oh so easy.

And I’m sure it is, when you can work out what to do with all those spare fingers on your left hand. Some of them have to hold what you’ve already crocheted together, some of them have to pull the wool tight, one of them has to stick up in the air and act as a feeder for the incoming wool, even though it feels so much more natural to curl it around and use it to pinch the incoming yarn.

I naively thought that knocking up a quick scarf by the end of winter would be a doddle, but when I got to the end of my first chain of stitches I realised that I didn’t understand the instructions for turning around and going back on myself to make the next row.

But I will persevere. I think a bobble hat may be too ambitious for a beginner like me, but seriously, how difficult could a scarf be?

Related posts:

1. I’ve finished my scarf
2. Re-thinking that scarf
3. Now I’m knitting a blanket