Yarn Circle!!

Remember forever ago when I mentioned that I wanted to get a yarn circle started, where I could hang out and crochet (or knit) with friends of mine who were also interested in playing with yarn? Well, I put the feelers out a while back and I had a few friends express an interest in learning to crochet. So this past Thursday I finally got my act together and invited them over for their first lesson.

I put together little starter kits for each of them:

Hooks, scissors, and an instruction book with a few patterns!

I got out all of the remnants in my stash so that everyone could work with the yarn of their choosing (and take home as much as they wanted for practice).

I crocheted up some small swatches as examples of the basic stitches.

Single crochet in side-to-side.

Single crochet in the round.

Half-double crochet side to side.

Half-double crochet in the round.

Double crochet side to side.

Double crochet in the round.

I also had m favorite reference book on hand to show them and recommend for if they decide to keep up with this. 

The Crochet Answer Book is a fantastic resource. 

I had initially thought I would take them through the three stitches I had made samples for and then walk them through a granny square. I may have been overambitious in my goals, however. I also forgot how utterly alien the motions of crocheting are to those who haven't done it before and realized that while I had given much thought on how to explain the stitches shown above, I had neglected to work out how to explain actually getting started. 

We had a great time, but we did more socializing than playing with yarn. Also, we had three two year olds running around, and even with my wonderful mother-in-law on hand to wrangle kiddos, our attention was divided. 

Still, we did eventually get down to the yarn of it all and we worked on the most basic part of crochet, the chain. They did pretty well:

Miss A's chain.

Miss T's chain.

They were very patient with me and both agreed they want to keep at it, yay! So I sent them home to practice their chains and they are coming back over this Thursday. I think once we've got chains down we'll start on single crochet. I am debating whether or not to just dive in to doing that in the round, since they've both expressed an interest in learning to make hats. We shall see what we shall see. 

I am looking forward to our next session, that's for sure! It's quite wonderful to be getting the chance to share something I love and that is such a big part of my life with some of my very favorite people.