Hi, I’m
Adriana.

My grandma, Ursula, was the finest crocheter I’ve ever known. Her eyesight wasn’t great, but it didn’t seem to matter. Her hands held their own kind of sight. The hook moved, the yarn followed, and stitches appeared the way music appears — effortlessly, inevitably, like they couldn’t have gone any other way.

The funny part: she couldn’t thread a sewing needle without help. But crochet? That lived somewhere deeper. In her fingers. In her bones.

She tried to teach me. Many times.

There was just one small problem.

with grandma Ursula

My grandma had no pause button. Her hands moved at a speed that seemed to belong to a different dimension — and every lesson became the same scene: her crocheting like a woman possessed, and me sitting beside her, completely lost, watching magic happen in a language I couldn’t read.

We didn’t even live in the same city, which made things harder. Every visit turned into another attempt. Another lesson. Another spectacular failure on my part. Another hug goodbye with the silent understanding that we’d try again next time.

But somewhere in all of that, I made myself a quiet promise. I was going to learn. No matter what.

So I did what stubborn beginners eventually do: I turned to the internet. YouTube became my teacher. Then books, tutorials, forums — an entire world of makers passing knowledge hand to hand, stitch by stitch, through screens. And slowly, then all at once, something clicked.

I fell in love with the process. With the particular joy of learning something genuinely hard. With the small thrill of watching a ball of yarn become something real and holdable and mine.

I learned many lessons along the way. Some of them the hard way.

For instance: UK and US crochet terms are not the same thing. My first Stormtrooper taught me that one. Let’s just say... it did not look like a Stormtrooper. It was ugly. Magnificently, memorably ugly. I kept it anyway.

But every project made me better. Every mistake pulled me deeper. That’s the thing about craft — it catches you like that.

These days I’m endlessly curious about making things. Crochet is where it started, but the rabbit hole keeps going: new techniques, new tools, new creative experiments I didn’t know I needed until I stumbled into them.

Derpy Monster is where I share that journey. A place for curious makers. For playful projects. For anyone who’s ever held a ball of yarn and wondered, quietly, just how far it might take them.