This week for Genius Hour, I started practicing the stitches that I will use to make my blanket. Unfortunately, this was much more difficult than I was expecting which was incredibly frustrating. As I mentioned in
last week's blog post, the stitches used in the pattern that I chose, which can be found
here are the chain stitch, the double crochet, and the slip stitch. Since both the double crochet and the slip stitch are created off of a chain stitch, that was the first stitch that I worked on. This is where my struggles began. Just holding the crochet hook was so awkward that making a stitch took both hands - nothing like the
instructions that made it look so easy. Not ready to accept that this was as good as it would get, I looked up different ways to hold the hook and found some other methods
here. None of these methods were better, so I returned to the original instructions where I had an accidental breakthrough. The instructions explained that the crochet hook should be held in the dominant hand, which is assumed to be the right hand. Since I write with my right hand, I and these instructions were only for right-handed individuals, I followed the instructions without giving it much thought. However, other than writing, I do everything with my left hand. So, I went back to researching and found a
video that showed how to crochet left-handed. This was much more comfortable. Learning that there are many different ways to crochet was my biggest lesson this week. By persevering and being patient, I was able to find the way that worked best for me.
After switching to left-handed crochet, my tension was still uneven, meaning that my stitches were inconsistent. The
advice that I kept finding was to try holding the yarn different ways and to keep practicing. While this was not as helpful as I was hoping for, it was better than nothing.
The next stitch that I worked on was the double crochet. Knowing that the instructions included in my pattern would be for right-handed individuals, I went back to the YouTube channel where I found the previous video to look for instructions that would work for me. I pretty quickly found a
video that was relatively easy to folow. I was surprised by how even my stitches looked and how much more quickly I learned this stitch than the chain stitch.
The last stitch to work on was the slip stitch. This is a stitch that I doubt I would have been able to figure out using photos rather than a
video because of the ways that it differs from the other two stitches.
Before next week's Genius Hour, I need to keep practicing the required stitches because I am still not entirely happy with the way that my stitches look. I still wonder if there is anything else that I can do about my tension issue. I want to keep researching to try to find this out. The next step is to create my first two squares and learn how to join them.
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