How the Internet Has Renewed Interest in Crochet as a Hobby

These days, whatever you are interested in, there is an internet site - or more likely hundreds of internet sites - to feed your passion. Thanks to the internet, crochet is enjoying something of a renaissance. Google 'crochet' and you'll be presented with 13,500,000 hits, so there's no shortage of material out there. How, then, has the internet helped to renew interest in crochet?

The main thing is that the internet has demystified the art of crochet. When I was a little girl, I used to gaze in awe at my grandmother as her crochet hook flew through her fingers and the latest project grew in front of my very eyes. I never imagined that I would ever be able to do something so complicated, but of course, I did learn to crochet - Grandma made sure of that.

Many people must have been put off learning to crochet, though, just because it looked so complicated. Today, courtesy of the internet, there are blogs and forums to talk you through projects, answer queries and suggest solutions to problems. There have always been crochet books, magazines and manuals, but the internet is more immediate and more personal.

If you've followed that difficult instruction to the letter, and your work doesn't even remotely resemble the illustration, what can you do? Unravel the offending piece of work and start again. After the third or fourth unravelling, you'll probably give up and throw the work into a corner, abandoning it in disgust. However, if you can log onto the internet and explain your problem to an expert, or an enthusiastic amateur, the solution could be a mere mouse click away.

Then there's the ready availability of crochet patterns, many of them free of charge. Back in the day, if you wanted to crochet a hat or a baby blanket, it meant a trip to the haberdashery store and maybe hours of browsing to find a pattern that you liked and that matched your ability level. In the past, I've made at least one fruitless trip before discovering the pattern I wanted, so the pattern selection process could be very frustrating. If I decide I want to crochet a pair of baby mittens for my neighbour tonight, as long as I have yarn and hooks in the house, I can download a pattern and hand over the mittens in the morning.

These days, just Google 'free crochet patterns' and you're presented with over 1 million hits. Narrow the search down to hats, and there are still over 200,000 paterns, right there on your computer for you to browse at your leisure, in the comfort of your own home. The other attraction with internet patterns is that, even if you decide to buy a pattern, you'll only have to buy the one you want. In the past, I've had to buy a whole book of patterns I didn't want, just to get the pattern for the only tote bag my daughter liked.

The internet allows crochet enthusiasts of all skill levels to maximise their potential with online courses and videos. Crochet clothing is fashionable at the moment - just look at the rails next time you go to the mall. At Breakthrough Crochet, you can learn to design your own fashions, adapt yarns to patterns - in fact, everything you would ever want to do with a crochet hook and yarn can be learned at this site.

The internet has renewed interest in crochet as a hobby by making it more acessible to more people and bringing it bang up to date. Forums and blogs serve to keep crochet enthusiasts up to date on latest news, as well as offering advice and guidance, and the ready availability of patterns online makes it quick and easy to select your next project. In fact, the internet is responsible for getting thousands of people hooked on crochet.