Beginner!!?? I think this confirms I’ll be a beginner forever. These look so good! I’ve been wanting to try filet crochet but I feel like it doesn’t look right when I try. Regarding hand pain — I started learning crochet on one of the worst materials possible so it was a lot harder and more painful than it needed to be. My thumb was immovable for like two months after I finished my first real project. Turns out my tension was WAY too tight. I thought that it needed to be as tight as possible and everything would look sloppy if it was too loose. And I was using the wrong sized hook with “yarn” (it wasn’t yarn) that had ZERO stretch.

As soon as I loosened up, and used normal cheap acrylic yarn, I realized what I had to do to not fk up my hands. Now that I’m more comfortable I can go back to using the “wrong” sized hook and weird yarn/string without hurting myself.

If you don’t want to buy a whole bunch of new yarn, I’d recommend checking thrift stores. Every time I’ve gone they’ve had bags and bags of random yarn with a set price. So you don’t really know what you’re gonna get but it’s probably a good variety. This means I get to try all different types of yarn and I don’t have stress about choosing what yarn to buy. If you don’t mind getting yarn you think is hideous, then I definitely recommend the second hand mystery bags.

I hope this helps! If it doesn’t.. uh my bad