Aurélie

Crochet came into my life when I was 9. I started crocheting alongside my grandmother, then I took a long break during my teenage years and my first years as a young adult. I picked crochet up again at around 24, around 2011, and I haven’t stopped since. Today, crochet is part of my everyday life. It is part of my professional world, since almost everything I create and develop revolves around it.

What I love most about crochet is the moment when a creation is finally finished and I find it successful. After spending hours counting, checking, creating, writing, sometimes starting over several times, there is that moment when everything is done, when, looking at the result, I tell myself: “Yes, now I know why I do this.”

It’s quite a difficult question, because crochet has allowed me to create and set up a lot of things. There is of course the podcast, every Sunday, which lets me talk about crochet and introduce people to this world in a different way. I also work with several magazines, for which I regularly write pages about crochet.

But if there is one thing I am particularly proud of, it’s the crochet meetups I organise twice a month. When I see all these enthusiasts gathered around a table, exchanging, chatting, laughing and sharing, I tell myself: “Yes, what I do is worth something.”

Yes, some encounters have really changed the way I see crochet. I’m thinking in particular of Crochet Maniak, a guest from episode 3, whose ease and naturalness on camera greatly influenced my own way of doing the podcast. But there are many others. More recently, Kuba from Pracownia Blask struck me with his very particular way of crocheting, especially by regularly letting go of his hook, while making incredibly cute amigurumi. It reminded me that, deep down, you can hold your hook however you like: what matters is what you do with it.

I also think of Marl, from queskyspasse, with her completely astonishing creations, of Vic French Crochet and her big cardigans, or of Velvet Crochet and her very colourful world.

In the end, it’s often the people who stand out from the ordinary who change the way I see crochet. Those who have a technique, a style or a world of their own, and who make me think: “Oh yes, you can do that with crochet too!”

What inspires me most today is, above all, people. That is actually what I try to convey in the podcast by giving the floor to a guest in every episode: telling their story, their way of approaching crochet, their creativity, their path. Creations inspire me too, of course. Some of them really put stars in my eyes. But what touches me most are the humans behind these creations and the stories they have to tell.

Yes, clearly. We are seeing a new generation arrive that no longer matches at all the traditional image people may have of crochet, that of a mostly female practice associated with older people. Today, many young people are taking it up, including men, with styles and creations very different from what we used to see. Social media has contributed enormously to this change. It has given crochet visibility and allowed new ways of creating to emerge. I find this change very positive: it shows that crochet is alive, that it is renewing itself and that it can still surprise.

Behind a creation or a podcast episode, there are many hours you don’t see: making, unravelling, starting again, doubting, sometimes getting annoyed, recording several times, editing, correcting…

But there is also the whole positive side behind the scenes: messages from people who wait for the podcast every week, those who dare to get started thanks to a pattern they found accessible, or simply the exchanges that all this work makes possible.

In the end, there is a lot of invisible work, but also an enormous amount of human reward.

I think I would choose a beach, feet in the sand, with Débo and Jimmy, my two podcast sidekicks with whom I already share a lot. The three of us together, in the sun, with our hooks and our projects in progress, that would really be the nice moment.