What it means to me to crochet

Crochet.

I remember being 7 and asking my mom how it was she was making the blanket she was working on. It looked like it was magic with the way she moved the hook and took the yarn and turned it into something warm and cozy. Not that my mother really had much time to crochet. I was the eldest of three at the time and she was a single mother. But every once and a while, I'd see her pull out her bag of yarn and get to working.

"It's crochet," she told me as she kept her focus on what she was doing.

"Can you teach me?"

That afternoon, she taught me how to make a chain, the simplest stitch one can learn. Everything you ever make has to start with chains and at 7, I was learning the first step. And as I made chains, and frogged them, and made them again, I learned what was comfortable when it came to holding a hook and the mechanics behind the magic.

About three or four years ago, I learned that my grandmother (my father's mother) was the one who taught my mom how to crochet. She had passed away when I was 7. And now I feel like every stitch I make, every new project I make is a step in passing on something she passed on to my mom.