Learning How To Crochet: Being Stubborn Finally Pays Off

I've wanted to learn how to crochet for a while. I don't particularly like the look of straight crochet or crochet granny squares but I thought it would still benefit me to learn as it always seemed to me that crochet was more flexible for making small embellishment pieces with shapes that are difficult to knit and I was set on making some cute crochet flowers.

About a year ago, I got "The Needlecraft Book", which is a reference book to learn and improve knitting, crochet, embroidery and most needlecraft, which is a very good book but as a complete stranger to crochet, I was only able to learn how to make chains. Everything else I tried learning from the book got my yarn in a big tangle.

More recently, as my daughters wanted to learn crochet as well, I came across the "Kids Learn to Crochet" book, which I bought for them, with the intent of doing some heavy borrowing.

During last week, as I was hitting a Knitter's Block: I had all my Christmas knitting finished and I was running out of knitting ideas, I decided to pick up the "Kids Learn to Crochet" book, my crochet hook and some of the yarn my daughters got me for Christmas;-)

Well if you want to learn something that's getting you confused, I have one piece of advice for you: buy a book written for kids, with big pictures and step-by-step easy to follow instructions, as this was the only thing that helped me learn the basic crochet methods.

After crocheting a headband for my youngest daughter, I decided to move on to my own crochet book (which shows a lot more methods, some of which I will probably never use), so I could make a flower.

I failed again and so I moved on to YouTube, where I found a great 3 part tutorial to learn how to crochet a really cute flower - written instructions are on the Mom of 5 Daughters blog with links to the 3 YouTube videos.

I tried, and re-tried, and ripped, and tried again, and I finally managed to crochet something that looks like a flower, Which you can see attached to the turquoise headband.

Turquoise headband in double crochet with 3-layer flower

I decided to crochet another flower headband in grey this time, just to keep practicing my new skills (and to not leave my oldest daughter out). My daughter didn't want a flower as big as the one on the first headband (she's past the age of frilly, pinky stuff), so I modified it a bit to get a slightly smaller flower with only 2 layers of petals. I left the hook attached to prove I really did this myself and didn't pinch the photo from another website (in case you don't recognise my kitchen tablecloth):

Grey headband in treble crochet with 2 layer flower

I find crochet very addictive, but my first love (after my daughters of course) is still knitting, so you may see a few knitted headbands with crochet flowers appearing soon in my Etsy shop.

***Follow me on Twitter and Like Sophie's Knit Stuff on Facebook for more updates***