A Look Back on my Earliest Crochet

I am 21 and I've been crocheting since I was about 11. The first few years I crocheted I wasn't really involved in the online crochet/craft community. I didn't know such a thing existed. I didn't see all the wonderful amazing things people did with crochet. All I saw was a striped double crochet baby blanket my mom made for a friend and potholders my grandma won in a charity bingo. It was a creative famine in my world of crochet. I learned how to crochet before I knew what I would do with it. I've always been drawn to weaving, crocheting and knitting. It was something I wanted to do just for the sake of doing it. Every time I saw something crocheted, it was new and exciting.

Of course learning was a bull-headed process. My mom tried showing me how to crochet and mostly the process just frustrated me to no end, but out of pure stubbornness I figured out the very basics and went from there.

I think in a way I was lucky. I got to do creative things that I hadn't seen anyone else do before. When I made my checkered scarf, I figured out how to do the color change without cutting any yarn. I had no idea other people knew that "technique." I just loved checkers, loved crochet and hated cutting yarn.


I didn't have patterns in the early days. In fact I've almost never used patterns. I think you learn so much more if you figure out things on your own.


This was my first scarf. Before I knew that there was more than one type of stitch. I didn't know I was doing a back loop single crochet. I just though I was crocheting. I thought it'd be cool to add a pocket. I didn't know how to do a button-hole, so I just figured it out.

This was my second or third scarf. I figured out how to do chevrons and wanted to something with it. I ended up with this weird number.

I've come a long way and now I'm spoiled by inspiration on a handful of sites for people interested in crocheting and crafts. But I'll probably always have the most pride in the first things I made.

Alien Illusion Scarf

I knitted up the Alien Illusion from Stitch and Bitch. The chart confused the heck of me in the beginning, though I forget why.

If you've never seen or heard of illusion knitting before, it's a way of knitting with two colors, where purl stitches raise one color so an image is seen when it's at an angle.

Face on it looks like this:


From an angle you see the illusion!

If you want to learn more about illusion knitting, here is a great place to go for how to, and a variety of illusion knitting patterns.


This will be my last completed project for a few days, it's because me and my fella are going to Gualala, a little ocean town a few hours away for the weekend.

From the Pantry

I made this quite a few years ago but I wanted to share. It's a scarf based off of one in the book Fruits. Fruits is a collection of photos of Japanese street fashion. I ended up selling it since at the time I didn't have a lot of yellow in my wardrobe. Bon appetit!

Proof that my photography skills have been consistently mediocre over the years.

From the Pantry

Here are some preserved goods from years past. Bon Appetite!