I learned to crochet shortly after my youngest son was born.

I had been an enthusiastic yo-yo sewer:

but knowing that I would soon have an infant in the house, I feared that my preferred craft with sharp fabric scissors and small quilting needles would prove dangerous to a curious child, so I was on the hunt for a new (and to my mind safer) crafting experience.

Somehow, through a series of thoughts I no longer recall, I settled on crochet and with one “free” plastic hook from a JoAnn Fabric giveaway I was off and running.

As I worked to expand my nascent crochet skills, I made a wide variety of crochet things. As a result he grew up with crochet toys, crochet blankets, crocheted (and then felted) potholders, crochet chair socks — and no memory of a life without crochet objects and a mother who crocheted them.

Crochet was everywhere he looked, and as such, he has amassed a wealth of knowledge about the craft, coupled with an outsider’s perspective, and he is often able to give me guidance that I find invaluable.

One such instance came several days ago, when we had weather that was both very sunny and very windy. I took advantage of the conditions and got out an assortment of crochet afghans from my collection.

They had been in a storage area that doubles as a window seat, and it had been awhile (a very long while, in fact) since any of them had seen daylight or gotten a breath of fresh air. I figured that a little time outdoors would do them good, and it seemed to:

While the crochet afghans were out getting sun, my son graciously helped me as I wrestled with the various tangles of yarn that remained. He tackled one particular yarn mass with a laser like focus, commenting on it as he went along.

He was after, what he described to me, as “the load bearing knot of the ur-tangle.”

What, I asked, was an “ur-tangle?” You know, he told me, the original knot of the whole tangle, and with that, he went back to his work. Eventually, he untangled a portion it and held up the offending remnant — what he described as a lint grommet — that had held so many disparate strands of yarn together and caused so much trouble.

It did not look at all significant, but these few, seemingly insignificant strands had held together many disparate strands of yarn, which in turn resulted in a sizable tangle, and today, while I resumed my organizational efforts, he took some time to tackle yet another tangle, and in short order he had “liberated” these pieces from another sizable tangle:

With all of this organizing, I hadn’t gotten a whole lot of crochet done, but today, as the afternoon wound down, I finally had time to sit with my crochet, and I took this small textured crochet square:

and I rehabbed it into this five-inch textured crochet square:

When we begin any journey, it is hard to know not only where it will end but where exactly we will go and what we will see along the way, as for my crochet journey, I keep my hooks close at hand and continue on my way, on stitch at a time.