What Crochet Means To Me

Anyone who knows me can attest to the fact that I am always trying to make things, no matter the time of day (you can ask my boyfriend who is constantly woken up by me shuffling through my yarn stash at 2am) or circumstance, I always need to be creating. This has been true for as long as I can remember. Now what originally sparked this urge in me, I honestly have no idea, but I am very thankful to the magical fairy godmother that granted me with the crafting/artsy genes because I don’t think I would be the same person without it. Growing up I found the world of art to be beautiful and fascinating and terrifying at the same time. There are so many different art forms in which you can express yourself and I wanted to learn every single one of them, and to be fair I have managed to become at the very least mediocre at a lot of them! In high school, I was very active in the fine arts and music communities as I was in AP Art, Marching Band, and Orchestra. While I do miss these things very dearly to this day, for various reasons I was unable to hold onto them while navigating my way through college. In college my life was dedicated to exploring the world of Film and Television Production, a career path that I had decided I wanted to pursue rather early in life.

This path led me to so many amazing and fun opportunities and allowed me to meet so many truly lovely, passionate, and creative individuals. However, if you know anyone in this industry they can tell you that the life style that it comes with is anything but easy, and although I loved the creative and collaborative aspects of Filmmaking, the lifestyle of working endless days on little to no pay (which in most cases was literally no pay) forced me to let that dream go. I know what you’re thinking  “You can do anything if you don’t give up!” and while I proudly applaud the people who live with that mindset and have accomplished their biggest dreams, my health and bank account were too loud for me to fight them on it. So there I was a few months out of college, a Cinematography degree in hand with no specific creative outlet. To be completely honest, it’s not like I thought of or even realized that there was no longer any main form of creativity in my life. I simply let the days pass by trying to figure out what exactly I was going to do with my life, working jobs that brought me no real joy or pleasure, just something to pay the bills, and over time I felt my happiness declining. I had become so used to some form of art being in my life, that I never comprehended how important it was to my mental health until it was missing. This of course is where Crochet comes in to save the day.

As much as I wish I could tell some fairy tale about how one day I picked up a hook and suddenly all of the clouds cleared, that is not quite how my story went. A second thing that anyone who knows me can attest to, it is that I am not patient. As much as I would love to learn every art form, my weakness is definitely that if I don’t take to something relatively quickly, I give up. The only real exception to this has been Crochet. Perhaps it is once again thanks to that magical fairy godmother, but for once in my life I didn’t give up immediately. I was certainly no Van Gogh with the hook in the beginning, my edges were anything but straight, everything I made would start to decrease because I wasn’t patient enough to actually count my stitches, my tension was certainly not consistent. It was a mess and I assure you I wanted to give up, but for some reason every time I thought I would put the yarn away for good, I always came back to it sooner or later. Flash forward to 3 or 4 years later and I can barely put my yarn away at all (literally, it is all over the place). I think only within the past few months have I fully understood why I love Crochet so much.

Fashion has become a more important part of my life within the past year or so, and to have an affordable medium in which I can create my own clothing is absolutely magical to me. Once I really started thinking of Crochet in terms of clothing and fashion, it was as if a million doors had opened up for me. One of the things I love most about it is the problem solving aspect. If there is anything you need to know it is that Crocheting clothing is like one giant puzzle (or at least that is how it feels to me). Over the years I think I have become a bit of a MacGyver and have the mindset that you can create anything you could ever need or want if you just use your imagination and this is 100% the mentality I have with Crochet. I will probably go more in-depth about what steps I take to create my pieces in another post, but overall, there is such a wide variety of stitches and techniques that all interact with each other very differently, and once you find the perfect combination of these stitches and techniques to create the project you have in your mind, it is incredibly rewarding (and kind of makes you feel like a genius sometimes). Though just a simple sweater can take days or even weeks to complete, there is no feeling quite like walking into the world wearing a unique piece of clothing that you made yourself, not to mention when someone asks you where you got it and you actually get to say that you made it yourself! How many people get to say that?? Trust me, people’s reactions will not disappoint you. Overall I think Crochet has satisfied such a wide range of creative needs for me in a way that no other medium has ever done, and though, like so many others, I am seldom proud of myself, I can truly say that I find pride in the things that I create and share with the world through Crochet. With that being said I hope to share my journey of creating my own clothing and fashion with you and hopefully help others find some inspiration along the way!