Hi friends, this has been niggling at me for weeks now and I can't bear but ask your thoughts:

My mother taught me to crochet a basic granny square over 20 years ago, and during quarantine I bought a hook and tried to remember what she'd taught me. After some initial struggles I thought I'd remembered what to do, before going on a 9-month crochet tear. I've been buying patterns and overwhelming my partner and home with masses of yarn crafts, everything from amigurumi to scarves and sweaters. I thought I was getting pretty good at it.

Recently I've wanted to challenge myself with some more advanced projects, so I jumped onto Youtube to watch a video walkthrough of a tricky pattern and realised the creator held the hook in her right hand and the long tail of yarn in her left. It didn't look correct to me, so I started searching more and everybody seems to crochet this way. I have somehow mis-remembered what I was taught, and now hold both the hook and yarn in my right hand. I must admit, I feel a little like a crochet fraud. I started wondering if my work would never be as polished as a result, and dramatically mused about whether everyone would laugh at me if I showed up at a crochet meetup one day.

I've since been trying to re-learn by holding the yarn in my left hand, but it's slow, clunky and my stitches look like garbage, I feel like it's even worse than I was when I tried to re-learn from scratch earlier this year.

I'm curious to hear from more experienced crocheters: As I try to branch out into more difficult stitches and patterns, is my self-taught technique going to get in the way of completing a pattern or impact the quality of my work, or if this strange technique works for me, should I not worry about it too much?