It all started....

a long, long time ago. Okay, a brief post on my crafting history in response to one of the Secret Pal 10 polls. I actually started crafting back in middle school. My mom had received small cross-stitch packages as a gift but didn't really want to do them herself. I took them and stitched them up. After that, I would pick up more of these tiny projects every so often from Wal-Mart or whatever other -Mart. So that was more or less the only craft that I worked on up until I graduated from college. When I came to Amsterdam to do an MPhil in Linguistics, my friends in the US got hooked on knitting. One Christmas (2004), I decided I'd like to give it and crochet a go. I bought two booklets, one for knitting and one for crochet, a pair of needles, a set of hooks, and some acrylic yarn and tried to teach myself out of the books--I wasn't very successful. I just wasn't patient enough to sit and follow/figure out the instructions. I couldn't get passed casting-on for knitting. I did get a bit further with crochet, but my "sqaure" kept slanting on one side, and I could never figure out why. And actually, I initially was more interested in crochet than knitting. It just seemed easier and more fun. But, I had a lot of questions about how it all worked and no one to ask--almost all of my friends were knitters and didn't know much about crochet. So, I was stuck with my slanted work and no solution. When I went back to the US the following Christmas (2005--putting me at 26 years old), I asked my boyfriend to teach me to knit. He taught me the basics--casting-on, and the knit and purl stitches. I also found a much clearer book about crochet, which made it clear why my work was slanting. With these tools, I started crafting. It took a few months before the obsession gripped me... By the end of May 2006, I had joined my local Stitch 'n Bitch group and have been crafting ever since!