I tried to get into knitting a few years ago to see if it would be a hobby that would help me relax (it didn't work for me), but I had never tried crochet. One of the presents I got for my birthday late last year was a “Star Wars Crochet” craft kit, with a book of Star Wars character crochet patterns by Lucy Collin and some yarn to make some of the characters (it was a thrift-store buy so the original crochet hook was missing). After my birthday I got busy with the hustle and bustle of the holidays so I didn't have a chance to try it, but over the past week I set aside some time and gave the first project a shot: Yoda.
I couldn't quite figure out from the book how to do the basic crochet stitches, but watching some YouTube videos got me started. I practiced the basic stitches with some old yarn I had lying around and a crochet hook sized for typical yarn, and then once I felt I was getting the hang of it I started in with the thin yarn included in the kit and a small crochet hook I picked up at the store. At first the smaller hook and yarn was quite frustrating, but over the course of the project I think I eventually got the hang of it.
Although there were aggravations involved with learning how to do things, and messing things up and having to back up or start over, overall I found it to be fun. And once I absorbed the basics it was cool to see how the individual stitches are used like a menu of parts that are utilized to achieve different effects. For example, I found it kind of delightful that the feet were done as sets of three popcorn stitches that poke out from the round rather than being separate parts to be sewn on.
I'm still getting the hang of a lot of things. Changing colors is still something I'm not 100% sure about, and I don't feel I have a complete handle on weaving in ends or stitching parts together, but I think I did pretty well for my first effort.
I've been working on it in small chunks over the past week and finished it yesterday. Things came together surprisingly quickly in the end, probably partly because my skills were improving as time went on and partly because the core figure is the biggest part and so the later parts had less stitching per part and therefore took less work to complete.
I really liked this project. I think crochet, or at least crocheting amigurumi things, works much better for me than knitting did. For one thing I don't really care about making clothes very much, but making cool little characters gets me far more emotionally engaged. For another thing I was comfortably able to do it all standing at my desk (one of the issues I had with knitting was that it led me to sit in one position for a long time, which would cause my back muscles to cramp up). I also found it a lot easier to start and stop, and easier to keep track of where I was without losing count while working on the individual steps. I'm probably going to make the next project in the book, and maybe get the yarn to do some more. It seems like each of the projects have some different nuances, such as more complex color changes, etc., so I think following the book will probably be a good way for me to learn and practice. If the projects continue to be fun I might even try to get into the craft deeply enough to try making my own patterns – it seems like that could be really interesting.