Thursday, May 22, 2008

The 4 Reasons to Join a Crochet Group

If you are new to crochet, or even a seasoned pro, a crochet group might be just what you have been looking for. Joining a crochet group can offer you help with a new pattern, help completing a lingering project, new crochet project ideas, and the ability to make new friends with a very similar interest to yours.

You may have investigated the idea of getting some classes to help with your crochet and found that the cost is too high for your budget, or there are no class times which work for your busy schedule. A great alternative to the structure and cost of crochet lessons are crochet groups.

Crochet groups are simply a collective of people who get together to crochet and teach each other things about crochet. Whether you have never crocheted anything or if you have a bunch of successful projects under your belt, you can benefit from a crochet group.

Here are four of the top benefits of a crochet group:

Benefit #1 – Learn New Patterns from People Not Books – Have you ever read a crochet pattern and went “huh?” Most everyone who crochets does that at some point. The abbreviations get the best of us and we have no idea what a pattern is talking about, let alone try to crochet it.

When you are a member of a crochet group, you can bring your patterns and crochet projects along with you to the meetings, and get help and advice from others who understand the techniques better than you do. Learning something like crochet is always better when you learn from another person rather than to try and learn it yourself from a book.

Benefit #2 – Help and Motivation to Finish Your Lingering Projects – Nearly everyone, at some point, finds that they have an unfinished project which they are either stuck on, or that they have become bored with and abandoned. Crochet groups are great for finding help to finish up the project yourself, or for getting a volunteer who will happily finish it for you. Sometimes, even the act of showing your half-finished projects to other people can prod you along and get you finishing them up.

Benefit #3 – Make Friends Who Crochet – One of the best advantages to a crochet group is that you will make new friends who also love to crochet. While crochet is generally thought of as being a pretty solitary art, getting together allows you to learn from each other and also to simply make friends. At group meetings you can swap ideas and you can even make-up fun contests or community service projects. Your crochet group is truly what you make it. So, get involved in a group and help to improve it!

Benefit #4 – Get Ideas for Your Next Projects – It happens to even the best crafters, they run out of ideas for their next project. Sometimes you can look through a ton of crochet resources and nothing screams “make me” to you. When you are an active participant in a crochet group, you can see what everyone else around you is making and that can spark something in you. You might love the new yarn that someone is using and think of something you could make with it, or you might love a new technique and have just the right yarn at home to try it out.

No matter what your motivation is, there is a great crochet group in your area just waiting for you to join. There really isn’t any reason for you to struggle with your projects or making new friends when you can attend crochet groups and accomplish both goals at once. If you happen to live in an area where there is not an existing crochet group, maybe you should start one for yourself. Advertise with free flyers and get some others who love crochet to join you. Before long you will have a room full of happy crochet lovers in your group.

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