RUSSELLVILLE – Though he’s been sharing his crocheting skills with the community for some time at crafting enthusiasts’ meetings, David Price recently offered to teach a series of classes when it became clear there was a demand for lessons.

Price said Tracy Houchens, adult programming coordinator at the Logan County Public Library, where Crafts & Chats meetings are held for people who want to make crafts with like-minded folks, asked him if he’d consider teaching others to crochet.

Though he’d never taught a class before, Price said he knew he had the patience to teach. “Everybody wants to learn and a lot of people don’t have a lot of patience … but I do,” he said. “I can go with them and show them.”

Price has been crocheting for roughly 45 years, having learned the craft from his aunt as a child.

“My aunt babysat and it was just the two of us,” he said. “She’d crochet and so would I. I didn’t want to go outside and play.”

Price recently went around a room near the front of the library, helping students figure out the process of crafting the initial slipknot and looping their yarn around a hook to craft a chain of stitches one-on-one.

Monday’s session was the first of eight planned classes, focusing mainly on turning a length of yarn into a chain of simple stitches. Future classes will focus on more advanced stitches and how to read patterns and crochet charts.

Houchens said she was happy with the turnout for the first class, which saw 14 women in attendance after 15 signed up.

Initially the plan was to cap attendance for the class at 12, she said.

“With any kind of program you do, if you have 20 sign up, only 10 might show up, so having all but one show up is awesome,” she said.

Brandy Appling, who attended Monday’s lesson, said she wants to keep the crocheting tradition alive in her family.

“My grandmother crochets, but she no longer can because she has arthritis, so I’m learning this so someone in her family can take up her art and no one else has stepped up,” she said.

Earlier in life, she tried to learn to crochet from her grandmother but didn’t have the patience for it at the time.

“I tried learning from her when I was 8, but as a child you wasn’t really interested in staying inside and learning,” she said.

Susan Fox, who wound her yarn into a knotted chain beside Appling, also said she came to the class because she wanted to take over as her family’s resident crocheter.

“My mother crocheted and she passed away in 2014 and she left me her crochet needles and I thought I might as well learn to use them,” she said.

She is interested in making blankets for members of her family.

“I thought it would be nice to learn to make some afghans and blankets and give them to my kids,” she said.

Though she learned to sew from older neighbors while living in Scotland in the 1980s, Fox had never crocheted before but found it manageable.

She was interested in coming back for the next lesson. “It’s fun so far. I can see some progress in less than an hour,” she said.

Pam Heal came to Monday’s lesson because she felt she needed a teacher in order to really get going. “I have looked at books and YouTube and I just wanted to have someone to help me hands-on,” she said.

Heal said she wanted to learn to crochet so she could have something to do during her retirement. “I’m looking for something to help pass the time,” she said.

Throughout the lesson, she received help from Price and Virginia Watson, a student with some prior crochet experience.

Watson, who has started learning to crochet several times since she was a child, said she took the class because she wanted to improve her skills so she could keep the tradition of crocheting alive in her family.

“I’m the only one in my generation that can crochet, so I decided my family needed someone to pass it on,” she said.

Watson said she considers crocheting important because of the role it plays in so many families’ traditions.

“You can make blankets and clothing and stuff like that,” she said. “It’s a tradition and it brings families together, to have something like that.”

– Follow Daily News reporter Jackson French on Twitter @Jackson_French or visit bgdailynews.com.