Your first yarn is important. You’ll be spending a lot of time with it, and it should be easy to work with, supportive of a tentative hand. But…you will end up not liking it very much, because there will be frustration. So what do you do?

Pick a plain, inexpensive, worsted weight acrylic in a light color that you neither hate nor love. For me, that was Red Heart Super Saver in a lilac color. I’ll explain each aspect of your decision.

Plain: No fun fur, no ribbon, no sparkle or glitter, no boucle. Those types of yarn make for some pretty and interesting end products, but they are HORRIBLE for trying to learn. You need to see every bit of the stitches you’ll be making, without other stuff getting in the way.

Inexpensive: You’re not expecting to make anything you’d keep, this is for practice – would you teach a child how to write on parchment? No, you get the Big Chief tablet.

Worsted Weight: It’s the “average” size, you’ll find it the most plentiful in the stores you go to. It’s big enough to work with easily, but not so big as to be clownish. It’s the #2 pencil of yarn.

Acrylic: Tough, durable, you can rip back and do-over many times. Other materials can be slippery or fragile or not provide the stitch definition you want. Again, acrylic is the standard.

Light color: You want to be able to see your stitches easily. Trust me on this. Even red is too dark. The baby colors are great for learning.

Color you neither love nor hate: You’ll be spending a lot of time holding on to this color and looking deeply at it. If you hate it, you’ll find lots of reasons to NOT sit down and practice. If you love it, you won’t for long and then your wardrobe will remind you of your crochet struggles and…yikes! So, just pick a color you don’t care about either way.

Now, as for the brand, you should get your crochet supplies at a “big box” retailer – you don’t want to spend a lot of money at this stage. So you’ll go to Michael’s or JoAnn or Hobby Lobby or Wal-Mart. There are some basic brands that you’ll consider for your training:

Caron Simply Soft: Not for training. It’s very soft, and a bit finer than the other two here. I love to work with it, but it’s too soft and splitty for training purposes.

I Love This Yarn!: Not for training. Hobby Lobby store brand, and you WILL love this yarn. I use it all the time, adore it. It’s too soft for training.

Caron One Pound: Would be good for training, but you really don’t need that much yarn yet!

Red Heart Super Saver: Yup. This is the training recommendation. The old standby, the one your grandma used. It’s NOT a joy to work with, it’s kind of hard, but for training, it’s perfect. The stiffness of the yarn will help you with forming the stitches, and the fact that it kind of makes your hands hurt will help you to put it down for a bit and only do the training and practice in 30 minute bursts.