Crackers in Bed

Ok. So, I’m not the most flexible person walking the earth. I am “of an age” when I have become set in my ways. I’m not stubborn or closed-minded; I can be persuaded to change my mind given sufficient evidence. But, by and large, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”

Such has been my attitude toward symbol crochet. Figuring I can’t be the only one who isn’t interested in learning this fancy-shmancy pattern device, I assumed that traditional pattern writing wasn’t soon to be abolished and that, by the time symbols have completely overtaken crochet patterns, I’ll be long gone anyway.

So, imagine my chagrin when my new crochet student walks into our first session with a pattern book done exclusively in symbols, pointing and announcing. “I want to make THAT!” I immediately began to panic. This woman is paying good money for my expertise.  Am I now going to tell her that I don’t know what the hell I’m looking at?  Well, mercifully, I had, on occasion, glanced at a symbol chart before and I did recognize a few of the symbols and the pattern in question was done in the round so that I pretty much could intuit where we were going and it did have pretty pictures and there was a glossary of symbol definitions. The sweaty palms dried up and my heartbeat returned to normal cadence and I thought to myself, “Hell, this isn’t difficult, at all. What’s the big deal?”

So, now I love symbol crochet.