History of crochet, the craft and me!

This afternoon I joined Ravelry, the crochet and knitting community started in 2007.  The fun I was having on that site started me thinking about the history of crochet.  I know that my Grandfather Aaron used to comment that I reminded him of his mother, who was also a nearly obsessive crocheter.  By the time I was in my early teens I was making afghans, ponchos and doilies, and he would see the project in my hands and it made him think of his mother, Edith Abernathy.  My mother, Willa, also crocheted all her life, as did her mother Margaret.  So, I figured I came from a long line of crocheters. 

   It has been interesting to discover that what we think of when we think of crochet is a fairly recent craft.  Really, it wasn't until the Irish Famine of the 1840's that crochet began to be used in an intricate way to decorate clothing or home items, a poor man's lace.  Some of the first crochet work was done in Holland and Germany, other than some very simple (mostly just slip stitch) work that has been done in various parts of the world from the Caucasus to Peru.  I also learned that it was the advent of mercerized cotton in the mid 1800's that really created the opportunity for the craft to take off.

   I was recently looking at a photo of my daughters, taken in 1984, that has what I call a "hippie afghan" or two in the background, along with a crocheted pillow top.  I made the crazy quilt afghan entirely from scraps of other projects I had made, which means I had done a whole lot of crocheting by the time I was 25.