Craft Bar was even more awesome than I thought it would be! And I thought it would be pretty awesome. :) As soon as people started showing up, I had three women come right over and say they wanted to learn how to crochet.
Teaching Crochet I've never taught anyone to crochet before, and I hadn't given any thought to how to go about it. I never realized how hard it is to just start chaining. In a way, I was learning right along with them.
They were all great students and I had them single crocheting back and forth pretty quickly. One woman (top left) learned so fast that I taught her double crochet, too ... except at first, I taught her incorrectly ... but once I figured out that I skipped a step when I taught her the stitch, she was crocheting like a pro.
Later in the night, an experienced crocheter started asking me some questions, and I ended up teaching her foundation single crochet (WIN!), and there were about three other women who came over and started learning crochet, too. I also was helping one woman with her knitting. How crazy is that?
One thing I need to remember is SMILE!
Sister Diane or
June (maybe both of them?) gave me the advice to smile ... and I sort of forgot. At first I was so absorbed in trying to figure out how-in-the-world to teach them to crochet that I forgot to smile. Once I got the hang of it, I was more free with the YAYs and encouragement. I hope I wasn't too serious and frowny.
Friends and Photos I barely had time to chat with my friends
Sonya and
Bethany (lower right corner) or the two cool co-workers that came. And it wasn't until the end of the night that I even thought to pull out my camera and take photos. Those are the only four photos I took. I definitely need to work on the documentation end of things.
Name Tag I ended up wearing the
Alice Merlino - Crochet Badass name tag. What's funny is that the only people who read it were my friends and coworkers that already knew what it said. Everyone else *noticed* the name tag and assumed, correctly, that I was an instructor, but they didn't actually read it. :) Well, maybe they read it, but they didn't comment on it.
Need More Craft Face TimeI love teaching crochet! I'm so excited about the next Craft Bar. I am also determined to find other ways to get more face-to-face craft time in. Once a month is not enough! I walk by all the empty store fronts in San Francisco thinking that there has to be at least one of these people who would let us have a craft night there. Or maybe I could find a business owner that would let us use their space after hours. Something! Somewhere!