Deramores Craft Blog Competition - All You Need is a Little Blog (The Patchwork Heart)

This post is my submission to the Deramores Craft Blog Competition 2015. Deramores is the UK’s number one online retailer of knitting and crochet supplies. Visit www.deramores.com for more details.

It is said that you can't teach an old dog new tricks. I have issues with that statement. A previous boss once called me a dog. Not outright "you're a dog" you understand, it was more along the lines of "you're like a dog with a bone". Anyway it really upset me, and I actually cried. I'm not a dog, with a bone or without. And less of the old, please. I may have reached 50 years last month (don't remind me), and I may feel like I need a winch to get myself out of bed in the mornings, but inside this withering coating is a 30 year old wondering where the years have gone. But even if the description fitted you CAN teach an old dog knew tricks.

I am a prolific knitter, and until a head injury 5 years ago I was also a not too bad cross stitcher. 

 Knitting and cross stitching were my stress busters, and I enjoyed spending many an hour stitching away. This picture of my Uncle and my children was from a photo I took myself. It took me 6 months of stitching in every spare hour to achieve this sampler, and I was cursing having them all in Hawaiian shirts because every little bit of the pattern is just one tiny square of colour. I wish I had preplanned!



Anyway, on to the old dog and new tricks bit. Well, as I said I was already a knit, so one would've thought that crocheting would have come easy, but no, I just could not get the hang of it. The positioning of the hands holding the yarn was just so unnatural. But one day I bit the bullet and asked my mother-in-law to teach me. What a laugh! I only wanted to know how to knit a cushion cover, straight rows backwards and forwards, not difficult. But it didn't matter how hard I tried my 100 chains ended up being about 10 inches shorter than hers. We could not figure out what I was doing wrong. End of crochet lessons!

It wasn't until I saw an advert in a local village community hall, advertising crochet lessons that I wondered if I could learn. So I phoned up and booked myself lessons with a lovely group, all mixed abilities and started 6 weeks of lessons. And wow! I flew, with wings!

In no time at all I had mastered the art of granny squares. Beautiful, colourful, artful granny squares, and so my love of crocheting began.

Cushions, throws, hot water bottle covers, you name them, if they can be made from granny squares then I make them!

Yes, mastering the hands was a bit of a bugbear. It is so unnatural after knitting, but soon my fingers didn't ache so much and I was well away. One of the advantages of crocheting is that it grows so quickly. And you can add as many colours as you like. My only problem is that I have only been able to master granny squares at the moment. Although I did once make a parrot for my son which he promptly gave to his girlfriend as a love token and Polly now resides in Budapest. But that doesn't matter because the other week I taught my bestie mate to crochet granny squares and she has been filling Facebook with her colourful, and quite skilful creations, and receiving a lot of praise. I am not jealous, not in the least. After all, I taught her. She learnt from the best, haha! And I've been invited to teach some WI-ers at the end of this month.

So whether I'm a dog or not (the jury is out), and I wouldn't say I was that old, it is still possible to learn new tricks.