It was a Thursday afternoon in October 2012. I was sitting at my work computer aboard the USS Yorktown pondering my upcoming 3-day weekend. Suddenly I had an intense idea to learn something new. "What could I teach myself this weekend?" I thought. A recent conversation with a coworker came to mind. (Shout out to Katie McDaniel!) We were driving back from a work trip a couple weeks prior when she told me about a blanket she was crocheting for her mom for Christmas. "What an awesome, sentimental gift," I remember thinking. “I want to be able to do that.”
Light bulb! I'm going to learn how to crochet this weekend! When 4:30 struck, I was stoked to get in my little red Jeep and drive to Michaels Stores -- a place I’d never been in before. I felt like a kid in a candy store looking for that yarn aisle and crochet beginner's kit. Let's see, hooks (check!), yarn (check!), Boye Knitting & Crochet pouch for hooks of all sizes (check!), and of course a How to Crochet instructional book with DVD tutorials (check!). I hadn’t even returned home yet, but I had this feeling that I was going to take this newfound skill and run with it.
God blessed me with an incredible amount of inner drive and determination. When there’s something new I want to learn, I’m all in. For the next 72 hours, I read, I watched, I read, I watched - hit play, pause, play, pause. I took notes like I was back in a college classroom. I practiced until I figured it out and ended the weekend with one modest-looking bookmark. I showed it off to my roommates like it was freaking masterpiece ;) I started with a ball of yarn and made something that had purpose -- this concept was enthralling and I couldn’t wait to make more things! It took several months to get the hang of it and learn all of the terminology. I wasn’t very good to start, but I knew I could be good and knew I had the determination to get there. The rest, as they say, is history.
You can truly do anything you put your mind to.
Marcy W. Gardner
