Notes on being a crocheter and artist

I’ve been crocheting since 2010. But before that, I thought I couldn’t learn it because I’m left handed. When I was about 8 my grandmother spent about an hour trying to teach me. She decided my left handedness was in insurmountable barrier so left me with a pile of Red Heart to play with while she cooked dinner. So for years, I thought being left handed was a deal breaker for yarn crafts.

But then a couple of friends taught me how to crochet by sitting on either side of me and coaching me over the course of a few craft nights. Fun fact: I crochet right handed because why not do it the most common way since I was learning a new motor skill anyway? Once I got started, I threw myself into learning as many different things as possible using YouTube when I got stuck. In the past 15 years I’ve made hundreds of items.

This week I was looking at a Pop Tart Kindle cover recipe (it’s not a pattern because it’s a make-to-fit situation) and it occurred to me that I’m getting progressively more comfortable winging it with crochet than ever before. And I started contemplating how as comfortable as I am with a crochet hook, there’s still a struggle with combining it with my art practice.

For the longest time I thought crochet and my art making were separate things. And even still they exist in a precarious alliance. I like the crochet art I make and I feel good about it. But there’s always this little voice in the back of my head that whispers “Who said you could do that?”. The various forms the inner critic can take are really something, aren’t they?

Who said you could do that?

I did. Crochet has a long history of make do with what you have, make it up if you need to, and just good old fashioned make it work. Given the proliferation of online and in print patterns available it might seem as if you need permission or some sort of certification to crochet.

There are certification courses with Crochet Guild of America or the American Crochet Association (to name a couple of US centric options — I’m sure there’s others globally), you don’t have to have any sort of certification to make crocheted things or sell them. (I would say though if you are interested in teaching, these two groups have a lot of good information on how to do that well.) But with all that said, if I’m working on a project for myself or for family member or if I want to make up crazy stuff to go in my art, I’m allowed to do that.

My Struggle

I think my biggest struggle with making crochet for my art is about my need for spontaneity in my art making process. It’s tricky to make crochet things on demand for integration in my art. I’ve tried to hit this a few different ways.

Making smaller pieces beforehand to keep in a bin, much like my paper bins, was my first idea. But this is hard because I can’t rip up crochet to resize it like I can with paper. Also I can alter the color of paper easily, less so for crochet.

So then I tried making on-demand for Deconstructed Seascape and while that worked better than having a few premade things on hand, it drastically slowed down my process. Now here we are at the precarious alliance between the things I want to make and how slow I am at it.

The weird thing is that if I am crocheting a project that isn’t “art”, like a scarf or a hat, I don’t care how long it takes. I work on it while watching tv or riding in the car or in a waiting room. Those projects become a time filler so they don’t carry the same urgency as any crochet associated with an “art” project. And after thinking about it a bunch, that comes down to how much I rely on spontaneity in my art making process.

When I’m creating something in an art journal or an art piece, particularly with paper pieces, I rely on my bins to provide something that will work with my in-progress work quickly. If I have to pull out of that process to: 1) figure out what to crochet and 2) crochet it, then the spontaneity is lost.

Wait for it

I feel like I’ve talked about this process a lot here. And it’s because I’m working on trying to figure it out for myself. Maybe it will become easier the more I do it and maybe it will stay an uneasy alliance. I do think my willingness to wing it and comfort with doing that will only make this whole process easier. The more willing I am to ignore the critic and allow myself to make what I want in whatever way works for me always seems like the best path forward.

I also think I often want quick solutions to situations and projects and that they often take more time than a 15 minute assessment and then banging out the answer and achieving a desirable outcome. I am a product of my culture and sometimes I hate that. It’s a constant struggle to stay focused and slow and being willing to tough some things out. I repeat to myself a lot “Good things take time.” Or “Wait for it.” (Yes, that phrase does sound like Leslie Odom Jr singing the Hamilton song in my head.) So I guess I’ll just keep doing that until the uneasy turns a little bit easier.

Where are you struggling to figure things out or make them work? I’d love to hear about it! Email me or start a conversation by leaving a comment on this post! If you’d like to keep up with what I’m working on, I’d love to have you as a newsletter subscriber. I include blog posts from here, cool things I find online, and pictures of my dogs. Sign up here.