Half-penny thoughts — 29sep25

I made it to my fourth crochet row on a non-project (no goal other than getting more comfortable with crochet) before everything got really ugly and went terribly wrong. That’s progress beyond just beyond getting a foundation row more than five loops long. I won’t be crocheting any afghans soon, but it is progress.

What I discovered and no one seems to say is that using crochet hooks several sizes bigger than the yarn is designed for makes for airy crochet (which may be desirable in some cases) and not a clean, tighter pattern, but it makes things a helluva lot easier to work on the basic technique to have more wiggle-room for a noob like me.

My eldest watched me for a little bit and gave me another tip that she admits she hasn’t seen as one given to people: making sure that the hook part of the crochet hook dips in at pretty obtuse angle, facing the teardrop side of a loop makes passing the loop smoother. Of course, some of it is learning tensioning on my part, but that was another key tip that I hadn’t seen in my instructions, so it was welcome advice.

Why am I attempting to crochet?

While I admit that I am intrigued with creating some of the non-afghan, non-clothing items out there in addition to the clothing ideas and eventually making a long, hooded cardigan for myself to “nest” within — the main draw is that I suspect that once I get past the learning stage, I can turn crochet into a bit of “active meditation”.

While I have done my fair share of “just sitting” in the Zen style of meditation, I have been a long-time advocate of movement as meditation. One of the more recognizable forms of movement as meditation is Tai Chi/Taiji, the super-slow martial arts frequently observed in greenspaces around the world. Or Qigong (which is built on a similar Taoist philosophy).

But I don’t think movement as meditation is restricted to specialized activities.

Because it is the mindfulness that matters, you can turn any repetitious activity into a meditative effort. Cooking, housecleaning, working an assembly line job. I’ve done all of these things while meditating. Hell, I’ve even played MMO (massively multiplayer online) games and have turned those into a meditative practice.

Crochet seems to me to be one of those sitting activities where you should be able to strive towards such a state of meditation. And it doesn’t require electronic media or the internet in order to create something. Instead of being a distraction, it becomes an exercise in mindfulness, something that is harder to come by in recent years.

And goodness knows that a sense of serenity would be welcome. It does not appear to be forthcoming from outside myself, so I might as well cultivate it within.

So I keep hooking away, hoping that it starts to feel more effortless so I can pursue a new way to meditate. Until then, however… whew. At least I haven’t rage-quit yet…