I learned to crochet as a child, my Grandma taught me, on one of our Summer visits to the other side of the Cascade Mountains. At 10, I was sitting on the lake shore with a skein of yarn, and a hook, rather than play in the lake with my cousins.
Texture, probably the number one thing people notice about my designs. I love to infuse fabric with bumps, lifts, and variance.

I spend more hours a day with a crochet hook in my hand than most people are awake. There are probably 300 designs in a series of folders and notebooks all over my house. It is not unusual to find a scrap of paper with a self concocted stitch pattern jotted on it, Some of them may be complete patterns, just in my own goofy short hand
I love yarn, and I spend a lot of time working out the fine details of a design. Not just the gauge, and stitches to use, but the economics as well.