I admire you crafty people! I would like to learn to crochet or knit this year. I've got a couple how-to books and DVDs that are supposed to teach you. My goal is to make an afghan. We've got afghans from my paternal grandmotherand maternal great aunt. I would love to be able to make some afghans for us and then as gifts to family members if I ever get that good!
Jill - start smaller and maybe look at different materials! I actually got excited by and started with a plastic knitting loom (Boye - red rectangle) and I'm currently using haystring as my "yarn" or "plarn" (coined by making the Wal-mart plastic bags into thin strips and rolling into a ball to use on a crochet/knit project. Common term now on the internet). I wasn't exactly sure what I could/was going to make but the first smallish rectangles have become "scrubbies" that I use to clean out the horse tanks (we have 4 - 100 gallon Rubbermaid tanks that turn decidedly, grossly green) and tubes that hold the Wal-mart type plastic bags, LOL. Now have a whole stack to take out and put in grooming buckets - they work great (like a burlap/cactus cloth) to pull winter hair off of these shedding ponies!
This one is not my first - but does show that I'd forgotten in between projects - how to "cast off" (end) the project. I left out a step on almost the whole top - causing it to not do the pretty top knots and to create a very tight, deep curve in the project. Yep, I could fix it - but that takes more time, more "plarn" and headache to make sure I don't undo too much of the project. Besides, it's the only one that doesn't curl up into a tight scroll, LOL!
It uses up quite a bit of that haystring, too. That was 2 strands (except for the first one and another using a thicker haystring - all of them have been using 2 strands on the loom).
Then started doing a VERY simple crochet pattern - chain the length of your foot and then single crochet stitches - to make a simple rectangle. Make 2. Then carpet stitches & a running stitch turn that into a pair of out door slippers (need to work a bit more on it, but!!). My grand daughters were very excited about theirs and I am now doing a pair for me. As fast as it makes up in haystring, I imagine it would be faster in yarn (it would look better, prettier, more colors, easier to do different designs, but I was trying to use the haystring up while making something I'm tired of constantly having to replace).
OK, now I have to go read all the rest of this thread, since I picked up on Jill's at #17 (page 1, I think).
Here's the tutorial I used to make the above slippers. There are a LOT of others - some might be easier to listen to or more difficult.
Beginner slippers with Glama
