Earlier this fall, I decided to learn to crochet in earnest. I say “learn” as if I were starting from scratch, but I have faint, fuzzy memories of both grandmothers leaning over my shoulder, guiding my hand as we built endless chains that trailed across the carpet like vines, only to be unraveled minutes later so we could start again. The classic childhood ouroboros: creation, destruction, repeat.

At some point, though, I stopped. I never got past the pot-holder stage, the beginner plateau where ambition meets a lack of tension control, and the yarn eventually migrated to the back of a closet, as forgotten as the recorder I learned in third grade.

But sometime this year, I realized I had drifted into the modern trance of double-screening — phone glowing while the television blared — and

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