Midnight crash course in hand crochet

So it all started with this gorgeous chunky yarn that I picked up at my favorite store, Creative Reuse. (For a freaking dollar, by the way, because it was already knitted into an unfinished project that I had to unravel.)

When I saw it in the store, I immediately thought back to these "arm knitting" tutorials I'd seen floating around before. I've been meaning to learn to knit or crochet for ages, and the idea that you can just do it on your arms instead of using any special tools sounded way easier! But it's for knitting big stuff, so that means you need big yarn, which is why I had never tried it. I had never come across cheap Big Yarn... until now. I finally saw my chance!

I was having a late night at my local makerspace and decided to start playing around with the new yarn. I wanted to see if I could make a throw blanket for the makerspace! I looked up a few articles, watched a bunch of YouTube videos, and... quickly found out my Big Yarn was still not actually big enough. :( Not for "arm knitting" at least. I came across a variant called finger knitting, where you wrap the yarn between your fingers instead of around your whole arm, which seemed more feasible. I was getting ready to try it, but it seemed pretty complicated and I felt like I was going to need to find some other yarn to practice with before I started on the real deal. So while I tried to sort that out, I also kept digging through the related videos and links a little more–until I stumbled onto an arm crochet blanket tutorial.

This one seemed a LOT easier to follow than the finger knitting, so I just jumped right into it... and you know what, it actually kind of worked out! The idea here is that you use your hand in place of the crochet hook, wrapping the yarn around your palm and then doing the 'hook' action by bending your fingers.

Reminder that I have never done any crochet or knitting before this, lol. So I was pretty surprised when I found that I'd finished two rows and they were actually like, stuck together more or less correctly! Definitely took a lot of rewinding and replaying the YouTube video on slow motion in order to get it down for that first row or two, but after that, it started to feel pretty natural!

Oddly enough, I actually ended up making up my own stitch after a couple rows, simplifying it down to not use as many loops. Which was probably a pretty absurd idea when I still have no fundamental understanding of how crochet works! But somehow it worked, and seemed to achieve my goal of getting me through the blanket faster and with less confusion.

My biggest challenge so far has been keeping the silhouette. I keep forgetting where my rows end and either turning around too soon, or starting to crochet down the side instead of just across the top! And I think some of my rows just end up too short because I miss stitches along the way in the middle. So I ended up with this funny little curve along the bottom, which is actually pretty cute?

It'll be interesting to see what shape the final thing ends up being! So far it's barely as wide as a beach towel, lol. That was partly because I'm not sure I really have enough yarn for a properly sized blanket, so a towel-shaped blanket might be what we get.

It really is a big mess, stitches all different sizes from each other and things just randomly changing part way through the project, but I don't mind. My mantra as I worked on it was "it doesn't need to be pretty, it just needs to be warm."

Anyway, I'm finding the process of crocheting very comfy and calming, especially as something to just keep my hands busy while chatting with my roommate! Hand crochet with this super soft yarn is a really nice sensory experience too.

Here's how the blanket was shaping up after two sessions of working on it. Hoping I'll be sharing a finished version with you all soon!