The longer I crochet, the more I realize that I am learning things that have very little to do with crochet. Some of the biggest lessons have actually been about motherhood, patience, comparison, and learning to let things be imperfect.
After making thousands of stitches, here are five things crochet has taught me:
1. Nobody sees the ends you weave in.
Weaving in your ends is probably the least glamorous part of crochet. Nobody looks at a finished sweater and thinks about all the little strands you spent time tucking away. But the entire project depends on that work. If you skip it, the piece can unravel.
Motherhood has a lot of invisible work like that. There are the meals nobody notices, the appointments you remember, the forms you fill out, etc. A lot of the work that goes unnoticed is actually the work that matters the most. You may not get credit for every little thing you do, but that does not make it any less important.
2. Ripping it out is not starting over.
Every crocheter knows the particular pain of realizing you have made a mistake several rows back. You stare at it, consider pretending you did not see it, and then finally admit defeat and start pulling the stitches out. We call it frogging, and I have done plenty of it.
But here is what I love about frogging: you are not actually starting over. Your hands already know something they did not know before. You know where you went wrong, and you know what to look for the next time. The yarn may be back in a ball, but you are not back where you started.
Relationships work the same way. You can lose your patience, say the wrong thing, or wish you had handled a moment differently. That does not erase everything that came before it. You can go back, apologize, try again, and keep going.
3. On the worst days, one row counts.
Some nights, all I can manage is a single row. It does not feel like much, especially when I am looking at a project that still has dozens of rows to go. But one row is still progress. The project moved forward.
I think motherhood works the same way. There are days when you have nothing left to give. Maybe all you managed was one bedtime story, or one conversation at the kitchen counter. It’s easy to look at everything you did not accomplish and decide it was not enough. But one row counts. One story counts.
4. The same pattern can create completely different results.
Give two people the exact same pattern, the exact same yarn, and the exact same hook, and you can still end up with two projects that look completely different. The tension of your hands changes the fabric. Your experience changes how you work. Even tiny differences in technique can change the finished piece.
Life is like that, too. We can read the same books, follow the same advice, and hear the same rules about what we are supposed to be doing, but none of us are working with the same materials. We have different circumstances, resources, personalities, and capacities on any given day.
5. It does not have to be important to be worth it.
This may be my favorite lesson of all. Sometimes I crochet something because I need it. However, most of the time, I crochet something for absolutely no reason other than the fact that I love making it.
I think we forget that we are allowed to do things simply because they bring us joy. Not everything needs to be productive. It does not need to advance your career, improve your health, make your home more beautiful, or teach you something. You can just enjoy it.
All my love,
Vanessa