To start something is hard, to finish something can sometimes be nearly impossible.
When I first started crocheting, learning how to make a slip knot and do a single stitch that wasn’t so tight and curved the whole piece I was working on, was the hardest thing for me to do. Once I finally got that part down, I thought that I could crochet anything, that I had surmounted all obstacles. But then halfway through my scarf, I stopped crocheting and never finished it. I learned that though starting a piece can be difficult, ending it is even harder. To finish a piece, you have to constantly invest into it by buying ball of yarn after ball of yarn. You must not just give it money, but time too, as you slowly crochet row after row. You cannot grow bored, and even if you do, you must push through it. When you finally finish, you feel a kind of accomplishment that makes everything you’ve done feel worth it. Life is the same in this way. We start many tasks and never finish them, but even though finishing is the hardest part, it’s also the best part, too.
It is better to start something over again the right way then continue it the wrong way.
There is nothing more disheartening than to get through ten rows of your crochet project just to find that you missed a stitch and there is a gaping hole in your piece. You wonder if you can overlook it or if anyone will notice. Perhaps your hole doesn’t cause your whole project to fall apart or maybe other people don’t notice, but for me, that was always a problem, because I noticed it. Instead of regretting and wishing the hole was gone, you take out all your rows and start all over again. Perhaps a lot of time went into it, but you don’t want to invest anymore time into a piece that will never satisfy you. As people, we have to know that it’s okay to start from the top again, it doesn’t make you a failure or a quitter. You’ve just noticed something wrong in your life that you looked over before and you’re deciding this is not what you want. Start again so you can be happier with your outcome.
There will never be any time except for the time you make.
This one kind of hits hard because it calls me out on one of my biggest flaws, which is procrastination. When I first started crocheting, I would always say that I didn’t have the time and that is why I did not finish my project, but the truth was, I didn’t have the motivation. As I continued crocheting, I realized that the only reason I have come as far as I did in my recent project is because I have made the time and stopped with the excuses. I told myself the truth about myself. I was unmotivated, but then I reminded myself about what I wanted and even when I didn’t feel like it, I continued moving forward. If I was going to watch an hour of TV, I replaced that with crochet. In life, you don’t get what you want by just dreaming. Like they say, anything worth having is worth sacrificing for. Make the time for what you desire to have in your life.
Patience.
Seriously, if you are going to crochet, patience is a virtue. I know that a lot of beginners who have crocheted have tangled a ball of yarn at least once in their lives. For me, I did it four times. At first I patiently worked at my tangled ball of yarn, but when I didn’t see results, I became frustrated and pulled at my yarn until it became so tangled I could not free it or it broke. Have patience when in a difficult time in your life. Keep your cool and take a deep breath. Continue to work through those tangles even when you see no results because it will happen soon. When I finally stopped getting frustrated, I learned how to untangle my yarn and better than that, how to never have it turn out that way again. Be patient.
There are many more things that I can say that I have learned from crocheting, but for now these are the basics. Thank you for reading my article and I hoped you all enjoyed it. Like Ricky Martin and James Joyce would say, “Life is the great teacher.” There is always something to learn even from the smallest things.
