life & style // no. 16 theotherpress.ca

Getting hooked on hooking

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> The joys of crochet

Caroline Ho
Arts Editor

 

f youre the type of person who needs
to be constantly doing something with
your hands, but don’t want to hop onto
the fad of fidget spinners, might I suggest
a better, artsier alternative: Crocheting!
Crochet is a type of yarn art, a bit
similar to knitting, but unlike the double-
needle-wielding of knitting, you only use a
single hook to create loops and knots. I’ve
always found crochet a lot easier, partly
because holding a crochet hook feels
more natural to me than holding knitting
needles, and I tend to constantly drop
the latter. Crocheted work also has the
advantage of being harder to unravel than
knitting, since with most types of crochet
you finish your stitches with a type of knot
instead of leaving them active in a series
of interconnected loops on the needles.
It’s actually pretty easy to pick up the
craft; all you need to crochet is a ball of
yarn, a cheap set of hooks, a few YouTube
tutorials, and a bit of patience. Yarn and
implements can be found up at your
local craft store or general supermarket
for (probably) under $5, and sometimes
thrift stores like Value Village are also
excellent places for supplies. Crochet
hooks come in a variety of sizes and
materials, but for a beginner, a plastic
or metal hook of about four or five
millimetres is a good size. Once armed
with your equipment, there are plenty
of great YouTube tutorials designed to
teach the basics of crochet. After you've
mastered that, you can work your way up
to more advanced stitches and techniques.
The wonderful thing about crochet
is that you can work on a project basically
anywhere and while doing so many other
things. You can crochet while watching
TV, listening to a podcast, talking over

the phone, Skyping with friends, or even
on public transit. In fact, crocheting
on transit has the added advantage of
being a surprisingly social activity, if
you aren't opposed to strangers taking a
genuine interest in your work, asking what
you're making, and sharing a moment of
authentic interaction on the bus or train.
Crochet is also fantastic for creating
presents for other people. A handcrafted
item is one of the most heartwarming
and almost always well-received gifts
you can give, especially since you can
customize a project to perfectly fit the
recipient’s interests and preferences.
Pouches to carry someone's hobby items,
dishcloths and potholders with logos, or
scarves in peoples’ favourite colours all
work as great gift ideas. As well as being
way more meaningful, it can be a lot
cheaper than gifting some knickknack or
kitchen accessory that will spend most
of its time sitting unused ona shelf.
That isn’t to say that hand-making
all items is necessarily more cost-
efficient—especially for clothes and
accessories—because high-quality yarn
can get pretty pricey. A small skein/ball
of 100 per cent wool can easily reach $10
or more, and you'll need several skeins to
make something like a sweater. However,
if youre just starting out and testing out
stitches, or if you're making something
like a tiny stuffed toy that doesn’t need
to be particularly soft on your skin, a
cheap acrylic yarn is absolutely fine.
Speaking of stuffed toys, that brings
me to my favourite thing to crochet:
Amigurumi! Amigurumi are little yarn-
crafted dolls and toys that can be knit
but are more often crocheted, since the
latter craft is better for creating very
small, intricate items, and for working
in rounds. Chibi versions of movie
characters, cute little animals, flowers,

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food items—you can find countless free
patterns online for making just about
anything. Amigurumi often uses very
basic crochet stitches and small amounts
of yarn, and something with a simple
round shape like a jellyfish makes a

good starter project for beginners. One
warning, though: once you start making
amigurumi, you may end up finding your
entire room cluttered with adorable little
plush critters and an ever-growing stash of
yarn (you can never have too much yarn!).

Photos by Caroline Ho

Whether you are making amigurumi,
accessories and clothes, or anything
else, crochet is an all around fantastic
hobby. Once your fingers know what
they're doing, crochet can be wonderfully
relaxing for your brain, or it can leave
your mind free to do a multitude of other
activities. For the crafty and creative,
for the fidgety, for those who need an
excuse to binge-watch TV by making
scarves at the same time, go pick up
a hook and start crocheting away!

RPG Hooks: Princesses are always trouble

> A twist on the classic RPG

Davie Wong
Sports Editor

 

Reever knows the classic story

of the damsel in distress. You, the
hero, need to save the princess, who
has been somehow kidnapped, despite
how impossible it may look to infiltrate
the castle. The important thing to
remember when going through one of
these is to throw hooks. Throw twists,
lots of them. Because even the newest
of players will know what’s going on
really quick if you don't. Here we go!

It all happened so fast. One second
you were enjoying a nice pint of mead
with some friends, and the next you
were being arrested for kidnapping the
princess and conspiring against the
king. Now you sit in the keep’s prison
contemplating your fate. The evidence
presented looks quite damning.
Whoever took the princess
was definitely no amateur. Several
personal items belonging to you and
your companions were stolen over
the span of several weeks prior to her

disappearance—yet you didn’t think
anything of it. What you mistook as
petty theft was actually part of a grand
scheme. Those items conveniently
turned up in the princess’ room and
around the path of the kidnapper’s
escape. In short, you've been framed.

However professional this intrusion
appears, it wasn't the cleanest. As you
might expect, the princess didn’t go
peacefully. Her resistance left a bit of
a mess, which included an unnamed
tome that belonged to neither you or
nor your companions. The blunder
has offered you an opportunity: Find
the owner of the tome and return the
princess so you can clear your name.

After having the opportunity to study
the tome, two things are immediately
obvious; whoever the tome belonged
to had been scheming fora long time,
and that the writing was eerily familiar.
It was similar to that of an old friend
of yours, who had long since passed
away—or so you thought. Does he hold
the secrets? Or is he truly dead?

Either way, you have been
tasked to retrieve the princess at any
cost. Failure was not an option.

 

Illustration by Ed Appleby