Writer Mark LaFlamme discovers that rounding out his character can be highly overrated. 

I will admit that for about 10 minutes, I really enjoyed crochet.

Creating a chain? No problem. Get some yarn around your hook, twist and turn until you can pull it through the little hole thing? Easy peasy. I might grow to love this new hobby.

Then it got real, yo. My wife, who was patiently teaching me the craft, advised me that there was more to do. I had to make “a turn,” for one thing. I had to actually start crocheting, which means trying to yank stubborn strands of fuzzy yarn through tight fuzzy spaces – under one fuzzy loop here, under two fuzzy loops there.

Plus I was supposed to count. Plus that thing where you have to jam your hook through one of the chains that brought you so much joy just a few moments earlier.

I hate it. Hate it, I tell you! And I don’t want to play anymore!

“Just finish the row,” says that wife, who has the patience of a saint when it comes to dealing with stubborn people. “I think you’ll find that it gets easier as you go.”

Of course, by then I had cast yarn and hook aside in order to chase a cat across the kitchen. Which is both fun and easy, I should add, whereas this crochet business was frustrating and hard.

So why bother? Why endure the frustration of a craft that’s probably not going to land me a job, impress the ladies or save my life in a survival situation?

Because it’s there, my friend! New year, new me, and all of that new age mumbo jumbo.

#@!%#!

Fact is, I’ve been making an effort these last few years to become more rounded, more versatile. I want to gain an array of new abilities in large part because I blew off so many chances to do so in my younger days.

Back then, I worked and played with people who were master carpenters, master mechanics, master electricians. But did I bother learning from them? No sir, I did not. I was too lazy, too focused on hedonistic pleasures to worry about my own skill set.

I was surrounded by people who painted, played music, built things from the ground up, but did I follow suit? I did not. Who had time for that kind of nonsense when there were beers to drink and girls to chase?

So now I’m trying to make up for my misspent youth by learning as much as I can, and the weirder the array of new skills, the better. It’s about roundness, remember.

I want to shoot skeet like a boss AND play a few classical pieces on the piano.

I want to ride a dirt bike in the deepest mud AND cook chicken leg quarters with a skin that’s both crisp and zesty.

Strop a knife blade and crochet a nice scarf. Double-end bag by day, coloring books by night.

And so on. And the plan would be right on schedule if I could just get the tension right in this $#!@$# trailing string of yarn; if I could just stop catching stray &*@!%& strands and making &*&%! premature turns, my goal of self-betterment would be just $!@!#! peachy.

Crochet this! I declared after the first 10 minutes left my hands twisted into cramping claws of rage, and after I’d uttered every profane word in my arsenal at least twice. Roundness of character is grossly overrated!

As I ranted, raved and swore off yarn sports forever, my wife waited calmly with a hook in hand. When the tantrum was over, she handed it back to me, along with the scrawny stretch of crochet I had so hoped would become a dish cloth.

“Keep going,” she said. “You’ll get into a rhythm and it will start to feel more natural, I promise.”

I huffed. I puffed. I snarled at the yarn and called the hook a mean name. Then I snatched it up and gave it another go, as much in defiance as anything else. With God as my witness, there would be a dish cloth!

You know. Eventually.

BY HOOK OR BY CROOK

As far as I remember, I’ve struggled with anything craft-related ever since I was a school boy laboring to fold paper bags into weirdly complicated book covers. There were kids who could do that kind of thing, kids who could not, and kids like me who had no problem at all bribing some brainy girl to make my book covers for me.

My shame is great. I was just not one of those kids who made things in arts and crafts class that made parents want to hang it on the fridge. I don’t think I ever made anything fridge-worthy, and clearly the psychological scars from those failings are with me still.

Or something.

Whenever I try to learn something new, it always seems to go the same way. I go in with high expectations, get frustrated, quit. I try again, catch a glimmer of hope, become overconfident, repeat the whole process.

It’s those glimmers of hope that get me through: the clay pigeon exploding into fragments after a long series of misses. A few notes of a Bach minuet that actually sound like a Bach minuet. A stretch of yard snaking obediently through the loops to create first one stitch, then two, then three, then five.

For many peaceful minutes, I DID develop that elusive rhythm: poke, twist, pull. Poke, twist, pull. For the first time, my hands felt like part of the crochet machinery, creating stitch after stitch and row after row. I began to understand the intricate relationship between the needle and the organized knots they created. It was smooth. It was meditative. It was Zen.

It was temporary.

Another snag, another wrong turn, another inexplicable expanse of yarn that seemed to be eating my hook. The very moment I would think “Hey! I’m getting it!” things would go horribly wrong again. I was like a kid who suddenly realizes he is riding a bicycle for the first time and who then crashes headlong into a trash can.

But, hey. Progress. After about a week of the soaring highs and crushing lows of crochet fu, I had about half a dish cloth completed. And I began to fret over that dish cloth any time the yarn and hook were not actively in my hand.

What if the cats got to it in the middle of the night? What if there was a fire? What if thieves were to break in and make off with my glorious half dish rag? I mean, God only knows what the street value might be.

And with those paranoid concerns came the most important part of my learning process: pride in the workmanship. Once you have that, there’s no quitting, no shortcuts, no tossing your yarn into the fireplace and taking up World of Warcraft, instead. Once you establish pride in what you’ve done, you own it and it owns you.

There will be a dish cloth, by God, but I’ll tell you this. That sucker is never going to see a single dirty dish or grimy kitchen counter.

That sucker is going right up on the fridge.

New year, new you

How are others seeking to better themselves in the new year? Through beer and loud noises, mostly. I have to admit, when I heard some of these ideas, I kind of wondered why I’d chosen to do something so mainstream as crochet.

Wayne Heyward of Sabattus: “Beer making. I have slacked off in recent years, but I have decided to re-dedicate myself to making more beer to share with my friends this year. Thinking I may try my hand at wine sometime soon.

“I started with the little Mr. Beer kit years and years ago, just to see if I would like it. After a couple of years I had to move up to the 5-gallon systems because my friends liked it and I was reluctant to share.”

Sherry Spencer Wilbur of Mechanic Falls: “I want to learn to play the bagpipes. I just need to find someone locally that can teach me.”

Bobbi Frechette of Auburn: “I’m teaching myself how to knit. Want to make my own mittens.”

Bruce W. Grant of Auburn: “I’m thinking I’ll try dobro lessons, as I can no longer play my guitar because of nerve damage in my left hand. And if nothing else I can drive my dog crazy with screeching noise from the dobro when I play it now.”