Teaching People to Crochet...

...is probably the most exhausting thing I have ever done!

More on that later, lets look at some more of my baby owls first. They appear to be hatching out of the wool in this shot!

I decided that a great way to promote the new wool range I am stocking in my shop was to make little owls out of each of the wool colours. Here they are, showing themselves off in the shop window. I started stocking the wool to run alongside the crochet classes I am taking. It is gorgeous Rooster Almerino (half merino, half alpaca) DK, very soft and the colours are scrumptious. I used it to make this blanket 18 months ago.

And last Saturday I had my first 'learn to crochet' class with 6 very keen students. Here they are concentrating hard on their Granny Squares! And all using the Rooster wool ;)
It took me a long time to pick up crochet so I do appreciate how hard it is, but over the last couple of years I have done so much that it has become very natural to me, so I had to put myself back in the shoes of a complete beginner to teach this class. There is a lot to crocheting, you have to learn how to hold the wool and the hook, how to swivel the hook as it goes in and out of stitches and how to get the flexibility in your wrists to build up a rhythm. As we were concentrating on Granny Squares my students had to learn how to do trebles (quite a complicated stitch to start with), and understand the structure of a square and how to achieve it - all in on day! Phew!! No wonder by the end of the day I was so exhausted I could barely speak and had to lie down and go to sleep as soon as I got home!
 
This photo shows the completed crochet by the end of the day. It doesn't look much but a lot of brain cells went in to the making of this! I think all the students were nearly as exhausted as me by the end! But they all seemed to enjoy themselves and I have heard that a few of them are already 'hooked'!

This is the Granny Square blanket I made as a demonstration piece for the class. I realised I hadn't shown you this before, mainly because I intended to keep going until it was big enough for a full-sized blanket or throw. I used Patons 'fairytale dreamtime' DK, which is a very reasonably priced 100% pure new wool yarn, though quite difficult to get hold of as my local wool shop doesn't like stocking 'wool' *sigh*.

I have my first Beginners Patchwork and Quilting evening class tonight! 

I am quite busy on the creative front making things for new classes, in fact I have a backlog of stuff to show you and not enough time to blog again! I am sure things will even out soon.