While I have worked as a freelance writer for years, as my “day” job I’m an English professor. I teach students skills like how to write an outline, create a thesis sentence, and analyze a piece of text. So as my college’s craft club adviser, I now find myself teaching different skills such as how to crochet, wow! Of course, I did this last fall and spring semesters, but then we had the summer off. Now I’m back into the thick of things at school including my English classes and the club. We had our first meeting the other day, and six new members showed up eager to learn some crafts.

After getting the administrative items out of the way, we had about an hour left to teach them some crochet basics, starting with the chain stitch. I had a little deja vu from last year. When members first start trying to crochet, they say stuff like “I can’t do this!” “Wow, this is so hard!” And they struggle with having to use both hands at the same time, one to keep the yarn in place and one to work the crochet hook. They have a death grip on the hook, and their shoulders are all bunched up around their necks.

I have a co-adviser this year, so there were 2 of us and 6 of them. We walked around the room getting them started, and then eventually, I found it worked best if I could sit in between two people and just do it slowly and they would attempt to copy my movements. I had to keep reminding them to move the hook and not the yarn. I said that probably 100 times: “Move the hook and not the yarn.” Newbies always want to keep the hook stationary and move the yarn up and down and around the hook, which is totally the opposite of what you are supposed to do.

Admittedly, as I moved back and forth between them all, I started to have my doubts too. In my head, I was thinking “Oh, wow, this is hard to teach to someone else. Are they going to get it or just get frustrated and never come back?” Finally, after about 30 to 45 minutes, all was well and they were chaining like crazy. A few actually had some pretty decent gauge going on, and they had the “ah” look as they sat back in their chairs, shoulders now relaxed, and they continued to crochet, like they were hypnotized by the yarn and hook.

Fingers crossed, they come back to our next meeting where I hope to get them going on double crochet. Technically, they should learn single first, but I remember from last year that students hated single and loved double crochet. They seemed to be able to see the stitches better because double crochet stitch is so much larger (I think). Obviously, I am probably learning just as much as they are at this point.