The beginner’s seat

Nobody on this porch is in a hurry —

Start slow: four steps from a length of yarn to your first blanket

This is the order the Tuesday circle teaches in, and the order it has always worked in. Take a week on each step if you like. The porch will still be here.

  1. Step 1 of 4

    Learn the three stitches, and nothing else yet

    Chain, single crochet, double crochet. Every beginner pattern on this porch is built from those three and a slip stitch to close the round. Open the stitch drawer, find the three entries, and make a ten-stitch swatch of each until your hands stop arguing with the hook. Do not buy more yarn yet.

    How long it really takes: two evenings, with a lot of undoing. Everybody undoes.

    Open the stitch drawer

  2. Step 2 of 4

    Your first square: the classic granny

    Four rounds of double-crochet clusters around a ring, with the count written at the end of each round. It is the square the whole porch started on and it is still the one I hand a beginner on a Tuesday. Say the count out loud when you reach the corner.

    How long it really takes: an hour the first time, years ago. Twenty minutes now. Yours will be the hour.

  3. Step 3 of 4

    A few more squares, then join two of them

    Make four or five of the same square so your tension settles; the fourth is usually where the corners start to behave. Then hold two together, wrong sides facing, and slip-stitch along one edge through both loops. The join is the skill that turns squares into a thing.

    How long it really takes: an evening for the squares, twenty minutes for the first join.

    Beginner squares to practise on

  4. Step 4 of 4

    Your first blanket

    A baby blanket is twenty squares; a lap blanket is thirty-six. Pick one square, one set of colours, and make them over a season. Join them in rows, then join the rows, then work one round of single crochet around the whole edge to finish it off. The blanket hides every uneven square you were worried about.

    How long it really takes: a season of evenings. That is the point of a blanket.

Two things the circle tells every beginner

Count out loud. Every round on this porch ends with its stitch count in brackets. Say your count out loud when you reach the end of the round. If the two numbers match, carry on. If they do not, you have found the mistake while it is one round old, which is the only time a mistake is cheap.

Your square will not be square at first. Nobody’s is. Tension evens out somewhere around the fourth or fifth square, and a blanket hides a lot. Keep the first one; the circle keeps theirs in a drawer to laugh at.