Free form crochet by definition,
has no rules. But that doesn’t mean there
aren’t stitches and forms that need learned to do this successfully. This is a
mixture of different stitches, crochet forms, and yarns that in the end look
like a crazy quilt of yarns. The
catch-22 is that to do this free-for-all, one needs to know a myriad of
stitches. This is not for beginners.
Likewise, if I want to paint a
picture but don’t follow artistic guidelines such as perspective, my painting
would be a hot mess, and I wouldn’t (shouldn’t)
want to show it to anyone.
Patterns, directions, and rules,
both grammar and composition, are like road maps: they successfully get you where
you want to go. If they didn’t matter,
they wouldn’t exist. This is something
the old masters knew. To put something
together, there are directions that need followed. People who crochet and knit
have patterns they follow to make beautiful afghans, artists follow rules of
composition, perspective, and design, and writers use grammar rules and
composition to write coherent, beautifully written pieces of work.
Why do I have to write this? This
needs said. Don’t scoff at the rules. My grandmother (the artist) always told me
that if anyone could read and follow directions, they could do anything. This is true. Many people today are under the
impression that rules don’t matter; they are “mavericks” for not needing
to follow rules. They are following
their own drummer - yada, yada, yada. And this is where we
are culturally, the dissing of the rules.
This is not the sign of a maverick, making up his own rules. This is the sign of a lazy mind.
There have been notable instances
of people who broke the rules and were successful in their writing – but they
knew the rules first. The take-away here
is that to SUCCESSFULLY break the rules, you must first know them. And that fact
remains true across all fields, except perhaps in art, sadly. The decline of
artistic standards, (thank you Jackson Pollack) however,
is a subject for another column.
