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Give me ambidexterity...
Nov. 10th, 2002 01:06 pmJenn finally taught me to crochet yesterday. Now I can chain-stitch all I want...in Jenn's funny left-handed way. She gave me some old yarn and took another piece herself and said "First you have to make a loop..." She was just tying a slipknot, but the way she did it and the speed at which she did it left me totally confused. After about five or six tries I got that down.
I discovered one of the things wrong with having Jenn as a teacher is that she tends to forget things in her explanations and then, when I do it wrong, say "Oh yeah! I forgot about..." She did the same thing when she was showing me the PS2 version of Tetris, which has a couple of quirks my NES brain wasn't used to, and she used them against me for a couple of rounds before realizing that I didn't know them.
The actual stitching part was even harder to learn than tying a knot! First you have to learn how to hold the yarn. This is what my usually-dominant right hand was supposed to do, and I don't think it was a waste of its abilities at all, because holding yarn is complicated. Twist it around a couple of fingers, hold it with a couple more...then do things to it. "Bring your hook under..." Jenn said. "No, honey, that's over. Under."
"I know you said under... but that looks 'under' to me! That's over? Okay, okay, look, I got it under now, see? Now what?"
"Pull it through the loop you just made..."
"What?! What loop?"
"The one your hook is in!"
Well, I knew my hook was in a loop, because I'd gone to a lot of work to make that loop, but that didn't really help me any. Whaddaya mean, "pull it through the loop"?
Jenn probably had five or six stitches done before I got it. This was the part where she kept adding stuff she forgot, like how to hold onto everything. And she tried to tell me how to keep my hook from falling out of the loop, which happened to me a lot, but whatever she said made no sense to me and I did end up figuring something out so that didn't happen so much. I also had to make myself forget the whole "under" thing, because it never did make sense to me. I didn't think of that direction as under.
Erin asked me what I was making, a scarf or a blanket or what? "I'm not making anything," I said, happily continuing to twist my fingers and hook in my yarn. How long are you going to make that? she wondered. "Until I get sick of it!" And I did continue until I thought I had the hang of it.
Now I can be like Jenn and Erin, who always say they're doing a scarf or a blanket. Just in time, too--it's getting cold again and this time I think it may be for real. I rode my bike home from work in freezing rain, and now there's a bunch of snow on the ground.
I discovered one of the things wrong with having Jenn as a teacher is that she tends to forget things in her explanations and then, when I do it wrong, say "Oh yeah! I forgot about..." She did the same thing when she was showing me the PS2 version of Tetris, which has a couple of quirks my NES brain wasn't used to, and she used them against me for a couple of rounds before realizing that I didn't know them.
The actual stitching part was even harder to learn than tying a knot! First you have to learn how to hold the yarn. This is what my usually-dominant right hand was supposed to do, and I don't think it was a waste of its abilities at all, because holding yarn is complicated. Twist it around a couple of fingers, hold it with a couple more...then do things to it. "Bring your hook under..." Jenn said. "No, honey, that's over. Under."
"I know you said under... but that looks 'under' to me! That's over? Okay, okay, look, I got it under now, see? Now what?"
"Pull it through the loop you just made..."
"What?! What loop?"
"The one your hook is in!"
Well, I knew my hook was in a loop, because I'd gone to a lot of work to make that loop, but that didn't really help me any. Whaddaya mean, "pull it through the loop"?
Jenn probably had five or six stitches done before I got it. This was the part where she kept adding stuff she forgot, like how to hold onto everything. And she tried to tell me how to keep my hook from falling out of the loop, which happened to me a lot, but whatever she said made no sense to me and I did end up figuring something out so that didn't happen so much. I also had to make myself forget the whole "under" thing, because it never did make sense to me. I didn't think of that direction as under.
Erin asked me what I was making, a scarf or a blanket or what? "I'm not making anything," I said, happily continuing to twist my fingers and hook in my yarn. How long are you going to make that? she wondered. "Until I get sick of it!" And I did continue until I thought I had the hang of it.
Now I can be like Jenn and Erin, who always say they're doing a scarf or a blanket. Just in time, too--it's getting cold again and this time I think it may be for real. I rode my bike home from work in freezing rain, and now there's a bunch of snow on the ground.