FORT SILL, Okla. (June 1, 2017) -- She started at age 8 with a single skein of yarn, knotting and unknotting it into various forms, early practice for what would later become an enjoyable and beneficial hobby. Now, years later, she's still knotting and unknotting yarn, but with different results.
When she's not working in the Fires Bulletin office as the assistant editor, Monica Wood is likely to be found at home, weaving and knotting strands of yarns into impressive displays of creativity, craftsmanship, and most obviously, love.
"Whenever someone I know is having a baby, I always make a blanket," said Wood, her hand on her newest aqua, navy, and red blanket, a gift for a friend who is expecting a baby.
What's the most challenging aspects of crocheting?
Making a mistake is really frustrating, Wood said. "I always have to fix it. I can't stop staring at it because I know it's there."
Sometimes that involves pulling out the stitches and starting all over again. A long process, but one that offers immense rewards.
Recently, Wood posted a picture of a current work in progress that involves a complicated box-stitch-square stitch to a Facebook page to which she belongs. Right now, the Facebook page is the main place where she shares her work. She finds the page to be helpful to connect with others who enjoy crocheting, to share ideas and trade secrets.
Within hours, the "Crochet Addicts" page responded to her image with more than 300 comments and over 5,000 impressions, or times that it was seen. Wood said that felt nice to have that kind of validation. Someone immediately contacted her to purchase the blanket and as soon as it's finished, the colorful afghan will have a new home in Michigan.
She used to sell her wares at the Christkindl Market when it was on post, but hasn't actively been advertising her products, preferring instead to be involved with the larger crochet world through Facebook.
"I just like doing it," she said. "It's relaxing, and gives me something to do with my hands."
Wood admits that since she has the television on most often when she's sitting with her needle and yarn, she's "watched" countless shows of which she never saw the screen. She joked and said that crocheting is a way of giving herself permission to watch TV, even if she never really looks up from her project to glance at the screen.
As one who is self taught, Wood spent many years developing her ability to use her yarn on different stitches. Right now, Wood enjoys using a "beautiful shell" stitch and a three-dimensional overlay stitch. Different stitches are used to create different effects with yarn, and it's not uncommon for one project to call for a few varieties of the same stitch. There are more than 30 "basic" crochet stitches.
When she started to read crochet patterns in her late 20s, she was dismayed to discover that a stitch she thought she'd invented had actually been around for a while.
"That was surprising," she exclaimed with a peal of laughter. "But as I continued to look back at older pattern books, sure enough, the stitch was there."
Teaching oneself how to crochet is difficult enough, but adding in the complexity of learning to read patterns can be just as challenging. Her current project's pattern reads something like this:
"Chain 4, 2tr in last ch * 2ch 3tr in last ch; rep from * two more times; 2ch sl.st in 4th chain, turn."
That's just for one row of work. This language is something that all crochet enthusiasts eventually pick up to read patterns described in books and on websites. When asked to translate this into English for the rest of us to understand, Wood explained that it means the project should include four stitches in each chain, with two treble stitches, or stitches that involve three loops of the yarn, in the last chain. The instructions go on to indicate two chains of stitches with three treble stitches in the last chain.
On average, a typical blanket can take anywhere from four to 12 hours and up to 60 skeins of yarn. Wood said it's easy to understand once you get the hang of it, but that some patterns have been written for British crochet enthusiasts. The Brits use different terms for the stitches, so Wood has to do a bit of translation from time to time.
She said that she's always been drawn to color, so if she likes the colors of a project, it's easy for her to finish it. There have been entire weekends when she's remained at home with her work, needles flying in and out of yarn. Her current preference is for a softer yarn since she's been making a fair number of afghans as of late. But she also makes stuffed animals, and for that she uses a stiffer yarn. In her cache, Wood estimates she has at least 200 different skeins of varying colors and levels of stiffness.
When asked what else she'd like to try, or what hobby she might take up next, Wood shook her head, and said, "I just love to do this. It's almost a compulsion at this point because it's so much fun."
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