Broken Foot, Whole Heart

This all started with a broken foot.

More precisely, this all started with a mishap involving a curb and a lower-than-expected piece of pavement . . . and ended with a torn ligament, an avulsion fracture, and a sprain of just about everything else in my left foot. (So much for fire drills being a safety precaution.) It was late April 2017, and I didn’t need medical training to know that biking, hiking, swimming, and just about everything but sitting on the couch would be out of the question for much of the upcoming summer.

For someone who’s never been a Netflix person, going stir-crazy was a serious possibility. Well, it was until a supposedly failed experiment came to my rescue.

A few months previously, I’d seen a friend crocheting an intricate baby blanket. The hopeless romantic in me was intrigued. I wanted to be able to make such beautiful things, too. So I bought a book, a hook, and some yarn and set to work teaching myself to crochet.

Let's just say my first results were . . . less than impressive. All I could seem to manage were long chains made up of loops ranging from huge to tiny with nothing consistent in between. Of course, I now know that’s normal for a beginner. But at the time, my perfectionistic self thought, “I’ll never get this right,” and I gave up.

Then the accident happened. All my supplies were still lying around my apartment. I decided, “Well, now I’ve got the time to figure this out. Let’s try again.”

That started not just a hobby but a passion.

Apart from providing considerable enjoyment, crochet has taught me skills I never thought I'd have. And I don't just mean the various crochet stitches. I mean, for instance, the art of creating a slipknot, which I could never figure out until I learned to crochet. Speaking of knots, I also learned that an accidental one is not (pardon the pun) the end of the world. With some determination—and occasionally some scissors and literal cutting of losses—any knot can be untangled. I’ve also picked up the language of the craft and can admire something HOTH (hot off the hook), groan when I have to frog (rip out) rows upon rows to fix a mistake, and have entirely too many WIPs (works in progress). Most significantly, however, crochet has helped me expand my creativity in a direction I didn’t think was possible.

See, when I first started crocheting, I regarded designers with more than a little awe. How on Earth did they come up with this stuff? Another friend, whom I greatly admire, mentioned that she aspired to create her own patterns someday. If she—writer, crafter, wife, and mom extraordinaire—could only hope to someday reach that level of crocheting, what chance did I stand?

Years later, though, I can look back and see how designing snuck up on me. My first designs were so simple that I didn’t even think of them as designs. The thought process behind them went something like this: “Oooh! Gorgeous yarn! What can my limited stitch repertoire and I do with it?” This led to such simple projects as neck warmers and scarves. As I quickly learned to read others’ patterns and began mastering new techniques, my thinking changed: “Okay, I know I want to make this yarn into a [scarf, hat, blanket, or whatever]. How can I do that with the stitches I know?” Such thinking produced items like a custom-sized throw blanket for my 6'2" brother—a project that should have been way too ambitious for a beginner but that I stubbornly managed to pull off.

In hopes of better funding my new hobby, I started an Etsy shop to sell my creations. Unfortunately, my bubble soon burst, as I found few people willing to pay prices that reflected the amount of time and skill that went into making my items. I also gradually realized that even if my shop did take off, I couldn’t possibly crochet fast enough to fulfill orders in a timely manner. Worse, I might become sick of doing something I loved. With that discouraging discovery, I shut down my shop . . . until, a year or so later, I somehow got the idea to design and sell patterns rather than finished items.

Interestingly, while my shop was closed, my creative process and sources of inspiration changed quite a bit. Now instead of the yarn or the desired product being the catalyst for each design, I found myself primarily inspired by nature, holidays, or practical concerns—or some combination thereof. For example, my Leaf Pile Baby Blanket (the lead image for this story) came from the desire to make a blanket that resembled the ubiquitous leaf mounds of my favorite season. MyYear-Round Pillow Cover series started with the idea for a décor item that could be customized for various seasons and holidays. And I developed my square and rectangular tissue-box holders for the car to solve the persistent problem of my tissues ending up anywhere but within reach while I was driving.

Today, my practical and romantic sides continue fighting, and the fallout includes a growing number of unique designs. Nature is still a big influence, as with the Foamy Waves Baby Blanket that I designed for my nephew. In other cases, a pattern is born from the thought, “I’d love to see X stitch in Y colors or in Z object. Why hasn’t anyone done that?” Such an idea led to my most recent designs: the Celtic Rainbow Baby Blanket and my first sweater pattern, which I’m still working on.

It still seems a bit incredible that all this grew out of a broken foot and boredom. Now I’m somewhere and someone I never imagined I’d be. I may have to forgive that dumb curb after all.