Thanks to Athanasia Mo Mowinckel for reviewing this post!
One goal of mine this year is to learn how to crochet amigurumi, that is to say, cute creatures. When working on my first project, a cat toy made out of yarn left-over from knitting projects, I thought of some similarities between this activity and being a beginner in programming. Here they are!
This poor bee has heart wings… mounted the wrong way so won’t be able to flee the cat it was gifted to. Unrelated excellent book in the background.
Importance of instruction quality
I bought an amigurumi kit that came with horrible instructions. Probably a bad translation to English but even assuming that, I can’t even think what crappy explanations it was translated from. 😅 I’m so grateful for the possibility to search for tutorials or videos that “click”! Even among good explanations, some of them didn’t work for me, so I guess writing yet another tutorial on something isn’t necessarily a waste of time as your own voice might unstuck someone.
Frustration is part of the process
I’ve seen a reddit thread where someone said learning how to make a magic ring, the very first step of many (all?) amigurumi patterns, made them cry. Well this intersects with finding instructions that resonate, but even so, having to frog (undo1) your project over and over again is normal. Just like you might have to try and try again something in programming… Even beyond one’s beginner’s days actually. We have to work on our endurance.
Thanks for tech
Very much like learning can be helped by technical tools (software for webinars!), I am thankful in general for the internet and computers and cameras and in particular for tools that help creators mirror their videos or photos so that I, a left-handed crochet learner, don’t need to add to my overwhelm by having to mirror things in my head.
The importance of practice
I am getting better at crochet because of practice. There’s no magical shortcut. Just like this quote of Hadley Wickham’s:
“Periodic reminder: The only way to write good code is to write tons of shitty code first. Feeling shame about bad code stops you from getting to good code.”
I am working on my tons of shitty stitches. 😸
The importance of scrap yarn
My first kit is cheap. I even started with left-over yarn, which is even less valuable2. This gave me so much freedom! In programming, I also believe in the importance of low pressure to learn. If you practice Git with my saperlipopette package, you can do so in temporary folders that are very much like scrap yarn: good for learning, fine to throw away.
Silly conventions
R starts indexing from 1, Python from 0. Well in crochet, a French maille serrée is single crochet in US patterns and a double crochet in UK patterns. 😵💫
So many pitfalls
Even beyond those silly conventions, there are so many pitfalls as a beginner! For some of the things I regularly do at work, I have internalized many rules and risks thanks to practice, but in crochet, I can get so overwhelmed. You have to count (harder than it sounds), you’ll be in hell if you forget to place your stitch marker at the beginning of a row, the tension is important (not too loose, not too tight), it’s hard to see what you’re doing with dark yarn, set up (the magic ring that doesn’t magically appear!) is a chore and difficult, etc. The list goes on and on. I guess they don’t say for nothing that it’s good to be a beginner: it will increase my empathy as an instructor!
Conclusion
In this post I summarized some common points between being a beginner in crochet and programming. I’d better follow my own advice and continue practicing crochet regularly. 🙂