crochet (with a tutorial at the end)

Sometimes I knit. I love the click of the needles, the soft line of yarn inching through my hands. I'm not very good at knitting, though. I mean I never finish anything because I get confused or bored or lost. And my knuckles and fingers start to ache. I put it down and come back to find all the stitches have slid off the needles and I can't remember where I was at. Bah!

Crocheting, however, is apparently a completely different beast. A much friendlier and more well-behaved beast. Let me begin by reminding you that there is only one needle (ok, one *hook*). The stitches seem bigger and more obvious to me so it's harder to get lost. And it just seems to go more quickly.

Maybe it's because I was exposed to it at a very young age. The go-to baby craft on my mother's side of the family is a flannel receiving blanket with a crocheted edge. I watched my grandmother make dozens of these for my sister and my younger cousins. Sitting in her lap I watched her nimble little hands line those stitches up as even as breathing, the flannel soft on my lap, her rings flashing. Mesmerizing. When I decided to make some a few years ago for a friend's baby it was so satisfying to find that I could call up those memories for the pattern. It just feels like a good thing to know by heart, filed away with my bread recipe and how to build a campfire. And, of course, it feels like the best thing to make for my new little niece.



If you want to make one, here's how:

Materials:
flannel, about a yard for each blanket
cotton yarn in a weight of your choice
crochet needle in a size that corresponds to your yarn weight
needle and thread

1. First excuse my non-official crocheting instructions. I hope it will make sense to you despite that.

2. Wash and dry the flannel to pre-shrink it. Make sure your flannel has no uneven edges (you want each edge to be a straight line). The selvege edges will be square. You can fold your fabric and use the selvege edge as a guide for squaring your other edges, or you can rip a strip from the cut edge to make it straight. I don't worry so much if the entire piece is a square, just that the edges are even.

3. Turn under your edges all the way around 1/4". Then turn all those edges under 1/4" and sew them down. You can do this with pins and a sewing machine, or you can turn as you work and handsew the edges down. I use the stitch I would use to hem pants--hem stitch, perhaps?

4. My grandmother used a fine crochet thread for the edging. I use something a little heftier and I like the nubbier edge it creates. To start the crocheted edge, make one chain stitch. Hold your yarn behind the fabric. Then poke (although the word poke seems too delicate, it's really more of a shove) your needle through the flannel just under your sewn edge where there is only one layer of fabric. Yarn over and pull the loop through your poked hole. Yarn over and pull that loop through the other two on your needle. Now do that twice more in the same hole. Chain once, and start a new hole about 1/4" from your first hole. Keep doing this. When you hit a corner make your hole right in the "armpit" of the corner. Do your crochet in the hole bit. Then chain twice to go around the corner, and do another trio of crochets in the same corner hole.

5. When you meet yourself, bind off and weave ends into your work to hide them.

6. Now you're done!