Something different...

A chance win of a crocheting tutorial on theamazings.com website a couple of week ago has led to this premature bit of Christmas on my blog today. 

Having never attempted crochet before and having only the flimsiest of grasps of knitting this Christmas Stocking seemed a bit over-ambitious. I should add to this that I am notoriously bad at taking instruction from anything or anyone.

 My first few attempts were very loose and unstructured. My first mistake was to ignore the instructions as to how to hold the hook and feed the wool. After starting the first four or five in my own rather awkward knitting-with-one-hand way I suddenly got the hang of the correct technique but the results were so different I decided to carry on in my own wrong way to make sure all 17 hexagons were similar  (Mistake #2). 

Mistake #3 was starting at the wrong point for the white circuit. I knew something was wrong because the hexagons were becoming contorted, and not just from my poor technique. At this point I should have stopped and returned to the tutorial but I was on a roll, and on a train, and nothing was going to stop me. On hexagon number 15 I accidentally started at a different point, which happened to be the correct point and everything became clear, too late! But at least they were consistently wrong, most of them.

The tutorial does assume knowledge of some crochet stitches, which left me feeling a bit lost at first but by repeatedly replaying key bits of the video I soon got the hang of it. Overall the content was clear and had some really good tips about steaming hexagons into shape (I needed this!) and sewing the pieces together (I overlooked this and had to unpick the toe section 3 times). Towards the end my main regret was having promised the stocking to my son because I think the hexagons could have made a rather nice cushion cover. Another project perhaps.