My first project

[Crochetdaddy]

Please be gentle I have been crocheting for about a month and yhis is my first project, its a chunky yarn scarf. The stiches are kinda loose and a little uneven but its a start.

[NCcountrygal]

Looking good.  You’ll be warm when colder weather arrives.  
 

ps. The forum is awaiting the owners to address spammers and trolls. 

[ReniC]

It looks great! As you go along, you will enjoy each and every project. Keep up the good work.

[greyhoundgrandma]

Great job! It looks really warm.

[cshort]

It looks great!

[Granny Square]

Nice work, looks very cozy! (a little hard to appreciate in our heatwave at the moment, but will be welcome come autumn!) 

[Tampa Doll]

You will find we are truthful and kind.  Never nasty and cruel.

I love the scarf.  I am sure it will be very warm this winter.  It really looks good and as you practice, you get better.

If I had pictures of my first project you would laugh yourself silly.

Keep it up and best of all enjoy the hobby.

[ratdog]

Love the color! The chunky yarn can be challenging with keeping tension even, even for experienced crocheters!  I look forward to seeing your next project!

[Mahoor]

It looks great for the start and I hope you enjoy making more projects once you get more comfortable with hook and yarn. You did it and that's the best part of it. great job.

[AmySolovay]

What a fantastic and brave first project! Well done! (Brave, because you started with a yarn that could be more challenging to work with than a smooth yarn would be, but you did amazingly well with it -- bravo!)

You really can't expect perfection on the first try. It takes time to work out all your tension issues and get to the point where you're always crocheting flawlessly. My first project was a granny square that somehow grew a fifth corner. It took me months to be able to make a project that was even close to usable. I'm guessing you must already have some experience with other crafts / DIY projects to achieve the great results you did on the first try...please tell us about what other crafts you do?

[Crochetdaddy]

12 minutes ago, AmySolovay said:

What a fantastic and brave first project! Well done! (Brave, because you started with a yarn that could be more challenging to work with than a smooth yarn would be, but you did amazingly well with it -- bravo!)

You really can't expect perfection on the first try. It takes time to work out all your tension issues and get to the point where you're always crocheting flawlessly. My first project was a granny square that somehow grew a fifth corner. It took me months to be able to make a project that was even close to usable. I'm guessing you must already have some experience with other crafts / DIY projects to achieve the great results you did on the first try...please tell us about what other crafts you do?

I have done some counted cross stich and before that mostly wood working but now i live in an apartment so i needed a craft to do in my apartment. Counted cross stich is fun but i wanted to do something fun that i could use. My mom has done crochet since she was a little girl and i wanted to learn but she lives halfway across the country so i had to learn on my own. She has been very supportive and helpful but its a little different when she is not in the room being hands on. I have found crocheting relaxing and challenging at the same time i love it.

[Crochetdaddy]

13 hours ago, ratdog said:

Love the color! The chunky yarn can be challenging with keeping tension even, even for experienced crocheters!  I look forward to seeing your next project!

Lol my current project is a blanket and it was looking really loose and ugly but the further i go along i can see my tension getting a lot better. Just gotta keep going and getting better. Mom always said practice makes perfect.

[AmySolovay]

10 minutes ago, Crochetdaddy said:

I have done some counted cross stich and before that mostly wood working but now i live in an apartment so i needed a craft to do in my apartment. Counted cross stich is fun but i wanted to do something fun that i could use. My mom has done crochet since she was a little girl and i wanted to learn but she lives halfway across the country so i had to learn on my own. She has been very supportive and helpful but its a little different when she is not in the room being hands on. I have found crocheting relaxing and challenging at the same time i love it.

I really wish your mom could be there to help you. It's ideal to have a teacher, but considering all the great videos and tutorials online there has never been a better time to learn on your own. 

Crochet is the ideal craft for people who live in small spaces. I lived aboard a sailboat for about 5 years, and crochet / knitting were the only crafts that came with me. For the first 2 years of that time period, my husband and I lived aboard a 24' sailboat. I literally had yarn stashed in the shower and in my bed! Haha. (I have pics of that posted; if you want to see the yarn in my bed, it's list item #6 in this list of ideas for how to organize yarn.) In 2012 we moved aboard a 34' sailboat which felt like a mansion in comparison, but even so, I STILL had yarn stashed in the shower. Even the smallest apartment would be spacious in comparison.

On a different note -- did you know you can do cross stitch on top of crochet? It sounds like you are well on your way to working out your tension issues with crochet. I'd recommend getting that totally mastered before you start on any cross-stitch-on-crochet projects, because they can be a little challenging even if your tension is perfect. But cross stitch on crochet is one of my favorite crochet techniques. At one point, I had a bunch of free patterns for that available. At the moment I can only think of a couple of them that are available online -- I'll link you to them momentarily so you can check out the technique and see if it would be interesting to you.

What you do: First you crochet a plain background of single crochet stitch or afghan stitch. (If you need help learning afghan stitch, I have a free tutorial for that: free afghan stitch tutorial) Then you can use basically any cross stitch pattern and cross stitch it on top of the crochet, using your crochet work as a substitute for aida cloth or canvas or whatever you used to use to do your cross stitch. If you take a random cross stitch pattern that wasn't designed to be used with crochet, you have to do a bit of extra math to make sure your crocheted piece will be the right size to cross stitch the pattern onto. 

I totally get what you're saying about making useful items. One only has so much wall space... I like to do cross stitch on top of crocheted potholders.

Back in the 1970s, it was trendy to work Tunisian crocheted afghans in strips and then cross stitch elaborate designs on top of them. Come to think of it, I used to have a bunch of old patterns like that -- I wonder where I put them all? 

Anyway -- here's a free pattern for a striped potholder that has cross-stitched accents. And here's a free pattern for a  Christmas-themed square that combines techniques: tapestry crochet plus cross stitch on crochet.

Eventually I will have some other free patterns to share that are similar to these; hackers made a mess of a bunch of my craft websites, so I am moving all my patterns to a new domain. I'm more than a month in and I've rebuilt 500+ pages, and I still have another 500+ to go before the project will be finished. But hopefully, these could give you an idea of whether the technique might be interesting to you.

[Apak]

Good start!

[Woodcamper Crafts]

Looks really cozy.  Good job