My name is Olivia, I am a mostly self-taught, 12 year old, left-handed crocheter.

At the time of writing, I have been crocheting almost 8 years.

The journey for me began when I was 5 years old, after watching my mom crocheting I decided I would try to crochet as well.  My mom said that she would show me the chain stitch, but that she would not show me how to do single crochet until I could proficiently do the chain stitch.

Me doing the chain stitch at about 5 1/2 years old.

I did lots of chains (and not very good ones) at first and spent about a year working on my chain stitch.

When I was 6 years old I was finally good enough that my mom showed me  single crochet.  My first attempts at single crochet were not at all good. My first “project” was supposed to be an I-don’t-know what, but it ended up looking like a green steel wool kitchen scrubby.

My second project was supposed to be a scarf but I kept accidentally decreasing on the ends, so I ended up calling it a shawl instead of a scarf.

I started checking books out from our local library when I was about 7 years old and started perfecting my tension, keeping my ends nice and even and learning double and triple crochet.

The next 2 years I spent perfecting my skills and learning to read crochet patterns.

Finally when I was 10 years old I completed my first project from a pattern, the Dancing Poppies Mini Bolero from the book Crochet One Skein Wonders by Judith Durant and Edie Eckman, along with a pair of baby booties and a ruffled bonnet for a friend’s baby.

Later that year I started making amigurumi dogs from the book Ami Ami Dogs.

Last year I completed my first paid order, a Baymax doll for a boy who loves Baymax. Pattern can be found here. (Pattern is initially in Spanish, keep scrolling down for the English version.)

My current favorite things to crochet are: the keychain sized dogs pictured above and dolls (pictured below)