Let’s get the yarn ball rolling!
How long have you been a hooker?
What got you interested in the craft?
What are you really good at?
What is one thing you’d like to learn?
Let’s get the yarn ball rolling!
How long have you been a hooker?
What got you interested in the craft?
What are you really good at?
What is one thing you’d like to learn?
I’ve been crocheting on and off almost all my life, as a little kid I’d sit and watch my mother crochet.
Mom would make beautiful afghans for family and friends, so that inspired me to want to do it too when I was 10-11 years old, so I asked her to teach me how, that then made for a funny story: my mom had me stand beside her and she said to do exactly as she did, then she put a crochet hook in my hand, and then indicated how to hold the yarn in my other hand, but I just couldn’t get it right for some reason, it was awkward as hell, seemed like 20 to 30 minutes in and I’m still struggling to get the hook right in one hand and the yarn held correctly in the other, and I’m super concentrating because I really-really want to learn this, that’s when she says to wait a minute, then she bursts out laughing, and then gasps out loud: “I forgot! You’re left handed!” Me being a kid even I didn’t think to question any of it, heh!
I’m, I feel, really good at looking at a piece and figuring out the stitch if it’s not too obscure, and also how to adapt something without a pattern to then make on my own. And I’m patient so don’t mind ripping the hell out of something a hundred thousand times if that’s what it takes.
Eventually I may dive into tapestry crocheting. Maybe but IDK? Right now, I have so so so much stuff to finish doing, and also making for others, but I’m content with all that.
@Whitehorse @cicatrized Oh bless! Haha I can just picture the moment she realised what was wrong.
My husband is left-handed too but when I taught him, we decided to try him the right-handed way round first just in case he could manage that since it would make it easier for him to follow other tutorials. Thankfully it worked out fine!
Do you still crochet exclusively left-handed or did you find you became more ambidextrous over time?
Yeah, I’m left-handed when I crochet, what my mom did next was put the hook in my left hand and arranged the yarn in my right hand and then faced me/stood directly in front of me, and said do what I do and it finally all made sense to my brain and hands.
Years of stuff like that growing up left-handed in a predominantly right-handed world though, has enabled me to do certain things with my right hand being the dominant one: I’m proficient with using my right hand with scissors because the kindergarten gestapo aka older student teacher’s helpers wouldn’t hear it when I’d sadly state “This feels funny.” when they’d be tasked with going around the room during arts & crafts time passing out the art supplies and scissors.
I also predominantly use a mouse in my right hand because 20+ years ago I asked a close relative to teach me how to use his computer and like with my mom, I trusted him to know what he was doing so I didn’t question it, also his setup of mousepad was to the far right of his pc monitor, and his mouse was wired/plugged in on that side, so I just assumed it must have to all be this way.
So, he quickly goes “Here hold this.” then shoved the mouse into my right hand, and tells me to rub that along the mousepad and indicates on the monitor how that moves the cursor, and I’m so caught up in doing what he’s saying, etc, that I never questioned anything, I’m just trying hard to do what I was being told. He walks off to do something leaving me in the room practicing moving the mouse, he comes back 20-30 minutes later and I’m not doing so well, so out of curiosity I switch hands just as he comes back in, so he sees I switched hands, then he quickly leans over me and snatches the mouse out of my left hand and then lightly taps me with it on top of my head, like he’s disciplining an impertinent child, and exclaims: “That’s not what I showed you, you can’t use a mouse like that, your stretching the cord!” Then I look up and glare at him for a full minute, then burst out laughing, because that’s finally when I remember the time with my mom and the crochet lesson. I explained I’m left-handed to him, and we laugh, he then said he’d arrange the mouse for me but I told him not to worry about it, I’d just kept messing around with until it felt familiar, and now I use a mouse in my right hand.
Then there’s just some things left-handed people have no choice in the matter doing, like driving a car with the console shifting manual on the right, I learned to drive stick shift though.
And now, from necessity, trail and error, and good’ol perseverance, when I crochet, I don’t need a pattern for left-handed people, and I also understand what to do when I watch a YouTube video on how to crochet things even when they aren’t made for left-handed people.