Please feel welcome to comment with your own clarification questions!

Beginning:

• There are two sets of terminology in crochet, known by the shorthands US and UK. I always use US (including throughout this post) and say that in my website but not the individual patterns. There are a few telltales if you don’t know which terminology you’re working with:
  • If you see sc, it’s US. I’ve seen some warnings that US slip stitch can be called sc in UK patterns but (a) I’ve never seen it in an actual pattern, and (b) it wouldn’t be used as a primary stitch unless you were doing slip stitch crochet, in which case you’d know what to expect.
  • If you see hdc, it’s US.
  • If it’s an amigurumi made with dc, it’s UK.
  • If you see htr, it’s almost certainly UK – I’ve seen htr in US-terminology patterns, but there it’s a nonstandard stitch that needs to be defined.
• If you are asked either to chain some number or attach new yarn with a slip stitch, it is implied that you are to tie a slip knot and place it on your hook first.
• The instruction “sc 6 in magic ring” or similar is preceded by an implied “coil yarn into ring, pull up loop, and chain 1.” The chain 1 is often but not always included in the written instructions; the first two implied instructions are what forms the magic ring.
• “Join with sl st into ring,” which would be applied to a chain, always means to slip stitch into the chain closest to the slip knot.

Middle:

• Stitching “in ring” or “into ring” is done by inserting your hook into the center of the ring, not between the strands of any of its stitches.
• In general, in fact, it appears to me that whenever you make stitches on a chain that is attached at both ends (i.e. not a starting chain for work in rows or a chain out/stitch back situation), you will insert your hook under the chain (in the chain space) rather than between the chain’s strands. It is certainly true for granny squares and other afghan motifs worked in the round.
• When working into the top teardrops of previous stitches, make one new stitch per old stitch if not directed otherwise.
• A range of row or round numbers followed by a single set of instructions (e.g., “8-14: Sc around”) means to do the same set of stitches for each row/round numbered, except for anything that cuts or otherwise finishes off the yarn, which (unless the instructions have you start new yarn) are meant to occur only at the end of the last row/round of the range.
• For double crochet and taller stitches, the row or round stitch count includes the turning chain, but not the joining slip stitch (if applicable). This may also be true for hdc but it is less universal.

End:

• “Finish off” (FO) means to cut the yarn, pull up the last loop on your hook until the cut end emerges from the final stitch, and weave that end in. “Finish off” may itself be an implied instruction, as well.
• “Cut a long tail” or similar instructions, on the other hand, mean to pull the cut end through as with finishing off, but then await further instructions. And, of course, it also means to leave enough yarn attached that you can use it to sew two pieces of crochet together or sew an opening closed.

The post Pattern assumptions appeared first on ReveDreams.com.

There it is with the fringe. This is a scarf in half double crochet, each row stitched in the bottom loop of the “faux teardrop” on the back of the previous row. I got the idea from Jenn Ozkan, but clearly from the pictures I used a larger hook for the yarn than she did: K/10.5 (6.5mm) for Red Heart With Love, a plush worsted at the thickest end of the weight class. I wanted the scarf to be soft and smooshy.

I started with a row of foundation hdc that was about 54″ long (though you could certainly use a starting chain instead), and stitched 9 rows total:
2 black
pink, black, pink, black, pink
2 black
The scarf is about 5″ wide. A skein of RH With Love is 7 oz/370 yds (198 g/338 m), and I used about three-quarters of a skein total: just over 3 oz (160 yds; 85 g/146 m) of black and just under 1.5 oz (80 yds; 43 g/73 m) of pink. Over half an ounce of black and about a quarter ounce of pink went to the fringe.

It wasn’t really practical to carry my yarn between stripes, because I was always starting colors at the opposite end of the scarf than I had finished them previously. Instead, at the beginning and end of each length of yarn I left a long tail to incorporate into the fringe. If you want to try out foundation half double crochet for the first time this isn’t a bad choice of project for it. There’s a great tutorial for foundation sc on futuregirl’s blog, and the modifications for hdc are minimal: still a ch-2 to start, a yarn wrap before each hook insertion, and pulling through 3 loops on the hook where in sc you’d pull through 2. Fuller instructions at the bottom of the post, but meanwhile fringe!

The recipient of the scarf has three younger siblings, the youngest of whom is still a baby. I wanted to put fringe on the scarf in such a way that picking it out would be laborious. My solution was to put the ends of any given length of yarn in two different tassels. I should probably tell you adding fringe took about as long as the crocheting, but if you did it a more simple way (either feeding a bundle of yarn through and tying it in an overhand knot, or attaching a bundle of yarn with a lark’s head knot) it would be a lot quicker. I cut two-foot lengths of yarn, 11 pink and 21 black for each side. Most, if not all, of the strands are in tassels no more than 3 apart. In between I tried to corkscrew them around – and sometimes not having messy strands meant getting the tassel strands around the outside of the lengths stretching between tassels. I did all the pink first so the black would cover it over a bit between tassels. The pictures below show the loose ends from crocheting, most of the pink strands woven in, and the fringe finished but not yet trimmed. I have a note to myself that indicates I believed I took pictures when 4 tassels had been knotted and the rest were awaiting the rest of the black yarn, but apparently that was only a hallucination.

Most of the 10 tassels on each end have 7 strands of yarn, but one has 8 since there was an odd number of strands left from crocheting. They are 2 pink and 5 black, 3 pink and 4 black, and one 3 pink and 5 black. I tried to have more pink on the outside tassels and less on the inside ones. I trimmed the fringe by eye, and the reason it looks shaggy is that I did so before washing the scarf. The scarf is fully machine washable and dryable (in acrylic yarn, and in a mesh bag to avoid snags) but the fringe will get split ends, so don’t trim until afterward (and hand wash/line dry if that will bother you).

Foundation Half Double Crochet:
1. Chain 2; yarn over, insert hook into first chain and pull up a loop. Pull it up a little higher than you would normally.
2. Yarn over and pull through first loop on hook (essentially, chain 1).
3. Yarn over and pull through all 3 loops on hook. [One foundation half double crochet, fhdc, made.]
4. Yarn over, insert hook into chain made in step 2 and pull up a loop. Again, a little higher than you would normally.

Repeat from step 2 as many times as desired, but stop after step 3 of the last hdc. Basically, step 1/4 creates a location to stitch into, and steps 2 and 3 are a half double crochet made in that spot. My note about pulling the loop in step 1/4 up higher than you would normally is because foundation stitches are supposed to be true to width, but if I do not make sure to pull that loop up tall I get a tight edge (a fhdc strip that curls downward) exactly as I do if I use a starting chain without doing something about my natural chain tension.

The post Last-minute scarf appeared first on ReveDreams.com.

Looking at my Dashboard, I saw someone had found my blog by searching “modified half double crochet.” I wondered what they might have intended, so I searched that phrase myself, with Google. The top result (and the only one on the first page that didn’t take the phrase apart) was a video by Zuliblu Crafts on crocheting an infinity scarf. The modification to half double crochet is that the loop that you pull up through the previous stitch also gets pulled through the yarn-over, and the last yarn-over is pulled through the two loops remaining on the hook. You could think of it as the yarn-over getting slip stitched down before the completion of the stitch.

To wit: YO, insert hk in next st; pull up a lp (3 lps on hk), pull 1st lp on hk through 2nd lp on hk (2 lps on hk). YO, pull through both lps on hk.

This is not half double crochet and my first reaction was, “that’s extended single crochet!” – but clearly not, since esc does not start with a yarn over. Extended single crochet, for a reminder, is sort of single crochet stacked on a chain.

Extended single crochet (esc): Insert hk in next st and pull up a lp (2 lps on hk). YO, pull through 1 lp on hk (2 lps on hk). YO, pull through both lps on hk.

And as another reminder, half double crochet (hdc): YO, insert hk in next st; pull up a lp (3 lps on hk). YO, pull through all 3 lps on hk.

I made swatches of all three stitches to compare, since they are relatives. I used three colors of Red Heart Soft; not every color has the same feel (I’m looking at you, Guacamole), but these do. Each swatch is 25 stitches by 15 rows, with 2 turning chains that do not count as a stitch. I figured that should be large enough for size differences to make themselves known.

The first one, purple, is old familiar half double crochet. The second, blue, is extended single crochet, which looked a mess to me while it was in progress but is more appealing now that I step back and look at the whole swatch. The third one, green, is the modified half double crochet. It took some getting used to; pulling the loop through the yarn over is a little awkward, but got easier with practice.

The half double crochet swatch is 6.5″ by 8.15″ and weighs 0.8 ounces. It is the stiffest of the three.

The extended single crochet swatch is 6 3/8″ by 9″ and weighs 0.85 ounces. It is the largest, though more so by size than by weight, and I have no idea why it is so wide. It is also the softest of the three, which should be no surprise given the measurements. It’s really quite airy.

The modified half double crochet swatch is 6″ by 7.75″ and weighs 0.8 ounces. It is decidedly smallest in size, but weighs just as much as the half double crochet swatch. Slip stitching the yarn over to the previous row apparently compactifies without using any less yarn. This is much less lacy than esc, but nearly as soft. I agree with Zuliblu Crafts that it is a good scarf stitch.

The first time I looked at the video the comments didn’t load. The next time they did, and someone said the stitch was called “counterpane stitch.” Well, the only sources I could find for that are modern and poorly cited: one that says simply “I found it in an old book” and one that uses very old fashioned terms but gives no source for their text. Then there is the Encyclopedia of Needlework available on Project Gutenberg and given a date of 1886 by Heirloom Crochet, which indicates counterpane stitch is exactly what we now call half double crochet (or half treble in the UK), and the stitch is question is called knotted stitch. I like knotted stitch for it, because pulling a loop through both the previous stitch and the yarn over does create a little knot-like loop around the vertical portion of the stitch.

Of course, crochet is kind of the Wild West of needlework, and it is not impossible that older sources used counterpane stitch to name both of these stitches – “the answer” I promised at the start might not truly exist. As an academic type, though, I will be going with knotted stitch until such a time as I see a primary source for counterpane.

Incidentally, the video also shows a nice by-hand method of making a slip knot, although I would switch the positions of the two yarn ends so the loop is tightened by pulling the working end of the yarn instead of the cut end.

The post What is this stitch? appeared first on ReveDreams.com.

Suppose you want to crochet an egg cup, or a vuvuzela — because who doesn’t? You need a tube that is open at each end, and ideally each end would have that lovely ring of interlocked yarn teardrops. It’s tough, though; one of the limitations of crochet is that if you begin crochet in the round with a chain ring, you have the choice between stitching into one of the teardrop strands (with or without the back bump), stitching around the chain (still no teardrop), or creating something that wants to be a mobius strip.

The solution involves starting in the middle, preferably the narrowest point or a natural break, and crocheting out to each end. In many cases you can do that with a chain ring, but when the point at which you begin is tight (say, four stitches around), the remaining loops of the chain are very hard to find when you go back for the second half. Not to say you can’t still go that route – put stitch markers in them at the beginning. I have what I think is an easier way to go about it, though it requires the starting round have no increases or decreases: foundation single crochet (fsc). [More on fsc after the cut, below, if you need lessons or a refresher.]

Here’s the idea:

	A. Make the number of fsc required for your starting round. B. Bring the first fsc you made around to the hook again so the strip forms a ring that is on the far side of the hook from you, and so you can insert the hook into the first fsc from the outside of the ring to the inside (pictures from two slightly different angles below). Be sure your working yarn is coming out the top of the ring so it’s in the right place to continue stitching. C. Begin your next round, either by slip stitching to join or making the next sc directly (though the latter will produce a tight spot to stitch in).
	D. When you’ve finished the first half, put a slip knot on your hook (a new length of yarn) and slip stitch to attach in the bottom of one of the non-end fsc. Make sure to insert your hook from the outside of the ring to the inside, as before. Chain up if desired and begin the first round in the opposite direction. The fact that your first round bridges the divide between the beginning and ending of the fsc strip will hold it together without any sewing. Alternatively, if you just want an open-ended piece with two nice ends, use the starting yarn tail to sew the bottom of the fsc round together.

Above left: the side where the two ends of the fsc round meet. Right: the side where the second length of yarn was joined. In both the bottom half was stitched first.

The clearest instructions for foundation single crochet that I’ve found are from futuregirl (Alice). She gives a verbal description, then step by step photos, and finally a video, so see her if you’re new to fsc.

Foundation Single Crochet:
1. Chain 2; insert hook into first chain and pull up a loop.
2. Yarn over and pull through first loop on hook (essentially, chain 1).
3. Yarn over and pull through both loops on hook. [One foundation single crochet, fsc, made.]
4. Insert hook into chain made in step 2; pull up a loop.

Repeat from step 2 as many times as desired, but stop after step 3 of the last sc. Basically, step 1/4 creates a location to stitch into, and steps 2 and 3 are a single crochet made in that spot.

The loop on your hook when you begin, and then at the end of each step 3, will be the top teardrop of the next stitch made. The nice thing about foundation single crochet is that the bottom of the strip also has teardrops; these are made by the chaining action in step 2. To use them you insert your hook in the same spot you did in step 4 (or, in the case of the last stitch, where you would have had you continued). It can be helpful to mark them with paper clips or other stitch markers, especially if you’ll be working in a confined space.

As a final note, when I first learned foundation single crochet I still had a tight bottom edge, one thing fsc is specifically supposed to alleviate. That bottom chain is made in step 2, but it consists of the loop on the hook at the end of step 1/4. If your fsc strip is curling downward (away from the teardrops made from the loop on the hook at the end of each step 3), pull the step 1/4 loop up a little taller.

The post Foundation sc cylinders appeared first on ReveDreams.com.

I tried a rainbow of methods. Each was 8 stitches across (however that is counted) and 6 rows tall; I chained 1 at the end of each to knot. They were made with a G hook (4.25mm) and two kinds of worsted weight yarn, Bernat Waverly for yellow and blue and Red Heart Soft for the rest. As usual, click any photo to enlarge it. In this post I’ll use tc to abbreviate turning chain.

Red
First I took the standard approach: Ch 10, dc in 4th ch from hk and rem 6 chs (8 dc counting tc). All subsequent rows: ch 3, turn; dc 7 starting in second st.

This is your friendly neighborhood gappy swatch. No reason to switch away from it if you’re using a hook that is very large for your yarn, or working a pattern that has a lot of open space. I have more thoughts on this below, however.

Orange
Ch-3 but does not count as dc: Ch 11, dc in 4th ch from hk and rem 7 chs (8 dc; tc does not count). All subsequent rows: ch 3, turn; dc 8 starting in 1st st.

This one has no gaps, but it does have lumps. The ch-3 add noticeable width on alternating sides of the swatch. I can’t recommend it.

Yellow
Ch-2 and does not count as dc: Ch 10, dc in 3rd ch from hk and rem 7 chs (8 dc; tc does not count). All subsequent rows: ch 2, turn; dc 8 starting in 1st st.

This was my attempt to repair the lump by removing a chain. It is an improvement. In fact, if you want something easy that won’t slow you down, this might be the best choice.

Green
Ch-3, counts as dc; dc dec first two sts together to fill space without adding sts: Ch 10, dc in 4th ch from hk and rem 6 chs (8 dc counting tc). All subsequent rows: ch 3, turn; dc dec in 1st two sts, dc in rem 6 sts (8 dc counting tc). Could also begin by chaining 11, dc dec in 4th and 5th ch from hk, dc in rem 6 chs.

I had written something in the Learn Crochet paragraph about decreasing with the chain, and this was my attempt to make that have any meaning at all – you can’t decrease with a chain in any way I know of! This looks pretty good from a distance, but of course up close you have the little triangles of decrease at alternate ends of the row.

Blue
Linked stitches (as in this post by Vashti Braha), single loop variation (her step 3): Ch 10, pull up lp in 2nd ch from hk, pull up lp in 4th ch from hk, YO, pull through 2 lps on hk, YO, pull through 2 lps on hk. Dc in rem 6 chs (8 dc counting tc). All subsequent rows: Ch 3, turn; pull up lp through one strand of 2nd ch from hk, pull up lp in second st of prev row; YO, pull through 2 lps on hk; YO, pull through 2 lps on hk. Dc in rem 6 sts.

This was easy to do and is nice looking, but made for a really difficult last stitch on the next row.

Purple
Faux dc with loop left on hook at end of previous row: Ch 8, make faux dc, dc in 2nd ch from hk and rem 6 chs (8 dc). All subsequent rows: turn, make faux dc, dc in 2nd st and rem 6 sts.

Faux dc: loosen loop on hook until it is a little longer than a dc is tall. Hold center of loop against shaft of hook with index finger. Wrap both strands of loop around hook by poking hook away from you under loop (as though base of loop is working end of yarn and you are yarning over). Yarn over with actual working end; pull through doubled strand on hook (2 loops left on hook). Yarn over, pull through both loops on hook. I learned this from a short video by Sandra Roarty and a much longer one by TXCr1cket, though I didn’t actually get what was going on until I tried to do it from memory after watching them on one occasion, and then watched them again later. Note that the videos say to make the loop as tall as a dc, but making it a bit taller to account for the spiral shape it takes on helps with the tightness of the loop you have to stitch into at the end of the next row.

Using the loop left on the hook after the end of the last row makes the faux dc look more like it is attached to the previous row in the same way the actual dcs are. I made the purple swatch a few times to make sure inexperience didn’t affect my results; the first time the faux dc was tight to stitch into on the next row, but with practice it was no worse than a turning chain (maybe even easier). It also took barely more time than a standard dc.

The picture below blows up much larger than mine usually do, so you can compare the swatches more closely.

For me the two winners are yellow and purple: ch 2 and don’t count it, or make a faux dc. Which one I use will depend on how much of a perfectionist I am at that moment.

While I was working it occurred to me that the starting chain is mismatched to the rest of the turning chains in the case of the standard method – you should really be adding 3 chains to the desired number of stitches and skipping 4 to make the first dc. Adding 2 and skipping 3 essentially makes the first two stitches an increase instead of neighbors. This is especially clear in the linked stitch method of fixing the gap, where in the first row you skip 1 chain and pull up a loop in the next, skip one more chain and then pull up the second loop. In later rows you skip one chain and pull up a loop, then skip a chain and a stitch and pull up the second loop. I tried the standard turning chain approach with that one tweak.

It’s a little hard to tell because my starting chain is tight anyway, but it is more square. If you made a dc rectangle and then had to stitch around it, I expect this corner would be better behaved than the standard one.

Any method that doesn’t use the turning chain as a stitch automatically has a match between the starting row and the subsequent rows, including the faux dc, leaving red, green, and blue. I could have started green this way easily by chaining 11, decreasing the 4th and 5th chain from the hook together, and continuing down the last 6 chains. In fact, I don’t remember the rationale against doing it that way in the first place! Blue is fixed similarly to red, by adding an additional starting chain and additional skip, though the skip is added after the first loop is pulled up: ch 11, pull up a loop in the 2nd and 5th ch from hk, complete as for a dc, dc in remaining 6 chains.

I hope this helps someone beautify their double crochet work. Have I left any methods off the list?

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The magic chain stitch in embroidery is structured like the standard chain stitch, but the links alternate colors. To make it, you load your needle with the full number of strands of each of two colors, and then when catching the thread for each loop you catch only one color at a time. It has a high fanciness-to-difficulty ratio.

I’m sure I’m not the first to adapt the magic chain stitch to crochet chains. Make a slip knot with two strands, and then chain alternately with each color. It will probably end up looser than your usual chain; the samples below were both made with an H hook (5 mm). It looks pretty neat:

After chaining the last link, bring the opposite color through it and tie the strands together in an overhand knot (or just tie the beginning and end together all at once).

I tried it with three colors, rotating among them, but a loose strand stretching across two links was too messy. Instead, I bounced up to a K hook (6.5 mm) and used two strands at a time, rotating which was left out. That worked better, but I think I prefer the two color version.

You’ll notice I have three different-looking tassels. The red-orange-yellow one is just the yarn ends tied together. For the green-blue one, I cut two additional strands of each color and tied them on after tying the ends together, to fatten up the tassel. The pink-purple tassel was combed out with a large pin and then trimmed.

These would make great lanyards, or a summer project to introduce kids to crochet!

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