Story-time: "The Little Crochet Campfire"
Story-time: The Little Crochet Campfire
By Anita Revel
It started with a realisation: not every person had the privilege of a Nana who sat beside them and taught them how to crochet.
Some of us were lucky enough to have those magical childhood lessons — yarn looping through little fingers, patient hands showing us where the hook goes, and someone saying, “No, no… like this.”
But what if you didn’t?
Well, there’s always YouTube.
Except… have you ever tried learning crochet from YouTube?
There are approximately 12 ways to hold your yarn, 17-gazillion ads and aff!liate links, and wtf is a magic circle??
And sometimes, those tutorials can teach you habits that are really hard to undo.
So I thought: surely there are people around here who’d like to learn — properly, from the very beginning — but would also like a coffee and a chat while they’re at it?
And so, Coffee-and-Crochet for Absolute Beginners was born.
One Wednesday morning a month.
Coffee. Conversation. Crochet.
No pressure. No judgement. And absolutely no expectation that you know what you’re doing.
Wednesday One
The first Wednesday, one woman turned up. Veronica is a retiree from Bendigo who has chosen to make the South West her new forever home. She arrived with some yarn, lots of enthusiasm… and the wrong-sized crochet hook.
Which, as it turns out, explained why her tension was giving her grief. Oops!
So we didn’t rush.
For an hour and a half, we worked on one thing.
Chain stitch.
That’s it.
Because before you can make the granny square, the beanie, the scarf or the fabulous oversized cardigan, your hands need to learn what they’re doing.
I call it hand architecture.
It’s about teaching your hands where to sit, how to hold the yarn, how to maintain an even tension and how to keep your fingers open enough to give your hook plenty of access to that yummy yarn.
The aim was to build good habits from the beginning — habits that would make crochet easier, more comfortable and kinder to hands in the long term.
It is like teaching your hands a language. And like any language, fluency comes with practice.
So Veronica chained.
And chained.
And chained.
And by the end, her hands were beginning to understand.
Wednesday Two
The following month, Jo and Katie arrived.
Katie was an absolute beginner, so we went straight back to the foundations and worked on her hand architecture too.
Jo already knew a little about crochet. She knew some stitches and was attempting granny squares.
But I took her back to the beginning as well.
Because you have to walk before you can run.
It’s tempting to rush towards the fun stuff — the beautiful stitches, the complicated patterns, the things that make you think, Look what I made!
But those foundations matter.
Learning how to hold your yarn with a relaxed hand.
Finding that sweet spot where the tension is even.
Keeping your fingers open so your hook can move freely.
Teaching your hands the rhythm before asking your brain to decipher a pattern.
And, of course, having a coffee and a chat (a yarn! ha ha) while you do it.
Wednesday Three
Then came the third Wednesday.
I arrived expecting another little beginners’ session.
Instead, I discovered something rather glorious.
Veronica, Jo and Katie had kept meeting.
Every week.
Without me. (And unbeknownst to me!)
They had been practising, encouraging one another, troubleshooting together and generally egging each other on.
And the results?
Oh, my goodness. Glorious!
Veronica was absolutely whizzing along with a scarf — almost without looking. She was so deep in the zen groove that her hands seemed to know what to do without consulting her brain.
Katie had crocheted a BEANIE.
A beanie!
From absolute beginner to I MADE A BEANIE!!
And Jo was challenging herself with increasingly complex stitches and making herself a sampler that she could keep as a reference.
I sat there looking at these three women in absolute awe.
I thought I was starting a casual crochet how-to.
But I think I really lit a little metaphorical campfire.
I’d invited Woven peeps to come and sit around a coffee table with little sticks and balls of wool… 90 minutes flew by, and I said “see you next month I hope!” and waved goodbye.
They stayed. They kept fanning the flames of this new skill, around the same coffee table, in the same window seat at Gourmet Merchant, every Wednesday, without me!
They didn’t need me anymore.
They had found each other. They had found a new skill. They had found a reason to keep showing up.
And somewhere between the yarn, the coffee and the conversation, they had discovered a little fire of their own.
That’s the magic of craft, I think.
We often begin because we want to make something -- a scarf; a beanie; a granny square; a retro handbag.
But somewhere along the way, we realise we are making other things too.
Confidence.
Connection.
Friendship.
Community.
A place to belong.
Perhaps that is why I love bringing women together around art and craft.
The making is important, of course.
But so is everything that happens while our hands are busy.
The stories that spill out over coffee. (And the laughter when someone “spills the tea” over tea ha ha.)
The shared frustration.
The little victories.
The woman who says, “Oh! I finally get it!”
The feeling of sitting beside someone who, a few weeks earlier, was a stranger, and now isn’t.
So, yes.
There is crochet.
There are hooks and yarn and the quest for perfect tension.
But there is also something else happening around that little table.
Something softer.
Something harder to measure.
Something I suspect every Nana who ever taught a little girl to crochet already knew.
Making things together has a way of making us feel less alone. And becoming comfortable with a new skill makes us feel more accomplished.
I couldn’t be happier that I only have to light the first spark.
That makes my heart infinitely happy.
And that regular Wednesday morning crochet session?
Well, the next one is Wednesday 14 October from 9am at Gourmet Merchant. This one is called “freestyle crochet” and is geared more towards learning new stitches. (I still have time for you beginners though!)
I want to keep these meetings small so I can give you my full attention, so please do book.
Big loves,
Anita
Don't forget to follow us on Instagram to be first in the know for upcoming workshops and reminders:
Comments