Finally, Hope

After many frustrating hours of sitting on my couch crocheting patterns that never turned into anything more than disfigured blobs, there is finally a glimmer of hope. And boy does it feel good.

This past week, I finally settled on a design for my crochet project: a baby jellyfish. While it would be nice to have a more exciting reason as to why I settled on the jellyfish for my design, it really came down to picking a design that had an accessible video tutorial to go along with it.

While I wish I was an expert on all of the crochet techniques needed for a project like this, the reality is that I just am not, and in admitting that, I knew that I needed the help of someone talking me through the different steps of the pattern as I worked through it.

What I particularly liked about the video that I chose (as seen above) was that they explained all of the steps right down to the basics, including how to use single crochet stitches (one of the most basic crochet skills) effectively in this project. I also just found the visual demonstration of the crocheting more simple to follow along with than many other videos I looked at because they worked through the stitches slowly while also explaining the process verbally in a very clear, straightforward manner.

As you can see from the screen capture below, there are a lot of options for beginner crochet videos when you begin to research for a project. While it’s great that so many are available, it can also be tricky to determine which one will work best for you, and the only thing I found that helped was simply trial and error. Testing out different videos and seeing which one had the details I needed was the only way I was able to wind up with this amazing video as my guide, so I’m very glad that I had the time to explore around a bit before settling!

There is one crochet skill in particular, crocheting in the round, that I had been really struggling to figure out. Crocheting in the round is essentially just applying your basic crochet skills but in a circular pattern so that when you’re done, you’re left with what looks like a crocheted sphere like the ones pictured below.

Until I found the video detailing how to make the jellyfish, I had been unable to get past the first row in the sphere, leaving me extremely frustrated. If I couldn’t get past the first row, how was I ever going to be able to get this project started, let alone done? Finally when I watched the jellyfish tutorial, there was a particular step explained in forming the first row that I realized I had been missing previously, and it all began to come together.

Now that some of my hope has been restored, my goal is to cling on to this victory and keep pushing through until I finally have something in my hands that begins to resemble a jellyfish!