Its just a little bit of history repeating ...

32 years ago, in the life of Hoppo Bumpo ...

I'm a kid. I'm visiting my slightly older, but much taller cousin. And wow she has a bike ... a two-wheeler. My bike back home is a trike with a red tip-tray. Sturdy and dependable, but none of the allure of this big-kid machine.

I'm allowed to ride the two-wheeler. It seems awfully high; I need help to get up and then to place my feet on the pedals. Then there's need for a little push to get started.

I'm very wobbly to start, but once I get going I manage to ride down the circular driveway. This is great. Round and round I go. Clockwise. Out the gate, along the path, back in the other gate; along the drive; out the gate again. Round and round.

But I realise that I have no idea how to stop. My legs are way too short. My feet cannot touch the ground. A sudden stop with the brakes, would surely end in being catapulted over the handlebars. So I continue circling and hatch a cunning plan. A Starsky-and-Hutch-style roll off the travelling bike.

As you can imagine, it doesn't end well. Frankly, rating up there with the time I hatched the cunning plan to forge through the hurdles rather than jump them, at the junior athletics competition.

Fast forward to this week in the life of Hoppo Bumpo ...

Its the final week of the granny-square-in-a-month challenge and I have been thrown a lifeline. A most talented and generous crafting girl offered to give me a crochet lesson. As we'd never met before, it was an incredibly kind offer. Not only did I receive a fabulous (and patient) crochet lesson, but she gave me some more suitable yarn and a partly worked granny square that I could continue on with (... and did I mention how lovely she was with my marauding Argy and Bargy?). Thank you so much, Kirsty!

So I took away the granny square and started going round and round. Chain three, treble, treble, chain one, treble, treble, treble ... its mesmerising and addictive. Round and round. Round and round.

At first I was amazed at how the square was magically forming. Then I started to understand how the process was translating to the work. Then when I dropped a stitch, lost count or got a bit confused, I felt confident enough to unravel a little bit and start again. I have crocheted in the park, at the hairdresser's and in front of the Olympics. I'm slow - terribly slow (the first independent round took 40 minutes) - but immensely pleased with this emerging skill.

The only thing I have been a little hazy about, is stopping. So yesterday I hatched a cunning plan. I attempted a Starsky-and-Hutch-style roll off the side of the granny square. And this is how it ended ...

I'm sure I was supposed to be in a corner, but I guess that's something to aim for next time ...