Learning to Crochet - Tips I Learned When Starting

Crocheting started as a way for me to give someone special a gift I hope she would cherish for a long time. I started with looking at a YouTube video to learn the stitch required for the pattern and once I knew, I got started.

I didn't have anyone show me anything, I mainly learned through the video explanations already out there. I thought I would share some things that I wish I would have known a bit more about through the continued love for this craft.

1. Know the difference between the hooks. There are so many hook options in relation to handle and size. Whether they light up or not. And ultimately the hook type. As you can see from www.planetjune.com there are two types of hook styles. I ultimately found out I do have a preference to my hook style and prefer the more tapered hook.

2. Tension is important. The tension and the way that you hold your yarn needs to be consistent throughout your project or you could end up with some oddly shaped items. This is one of those items where experience provides you the most help. Though I also found tension to be more consistent when I changed the way I held my yarn. This leads me to number 3.

3. Holding your yarn is person specific. Since I watched videos to learn, I always saw the yarn held the same way. Around the pinky, through some fingers and over the top of the pointer finger but the yarn kept getting stuck on my pinky and I got frustrated fairly early on. My advice is to find what feels comfortable to you. I now only hold the yarn over my pointer and down through my hand around my middle finger. Since I use the hook to pull up the yarn, this keeps my tension the same. This is great to experiment with practicing your tension.

4. Count your stitches. I still count and place stitch markers along the way. This will help to guarantee you are staying consistent with the number of stitches and will ensure that you have straight edges to your work.

5. Don't start too many projects at once. I fall into this trap all the time, even 4 years later. I find the next pattern I want to try and go out and find the perfect yarn and get it started and then see the next pattern and go get the yarn to start and the next thing you know, you have more 1/2 started projects than you can complete. It exciting and new (if you're reading this as a beginner) and you just want to go, but take the time to complete the projects. The feeling you get when they are complete is something that still makes me so excited.

6. Stay Organized. Once you get going you'll realize that there are a lot of needed items to crochet. Yarn, hooks, stitch markers, needles, scissors just to name the basics. It can easily get out of hand. Make sure that you stay organized.

7. Weave in End as You Go. I think this is my least favorite part about crocheting. There are a lot of items out there to you can try instead of having the ends to weave in, invisible join is one example that comes to mind. But when you do have lots of ends to weave in, as https://www.creativejewishmom.com/ shows us, there can be a lot, so I like to weave my ends as I go, so I don't have to deal with all of this at the end of project.

8. Learn to Read Written Patterns. For a long time I avoided this. I used online videos to help me do the pattern. I soon learned that I needed to be able to read a pattern if I wanted to expand my horizon. I did this by slowing reading each row and took my time to understand what it was asking vs. what just blindly trying to do it. I'm still learning to read graph patterns but have found that when a written pattern also includes the graph, to start reading the graph and see if what was down for the written instructions matches what I determined from the graph.

9. Learn About Yarn. I think this was one of my bigger downfalls. I got yarn that I liked. What I didn't know until later is that some yarn times are not conducive for certain projects. For example, I wanted to learn a new stitch, so I used acrylic yarn. The project that I thought I would do was a pot holder. Did you know that acrylic yarn isn't good for that, as high heat can melt the yarn?

10. Read the Yarn Label. I didn't realize how much information was really available on this little ball of fun. Suggested hook size (though don't be afraid to change hook size to meet your project needs), yarn weight (thickness category), yarn type (cotton, acrylic, etc.), washing /care needs, dye lot (you want the same lot number for a project as different dye lots could vary in color), and potentially which side is center pull if that is your preferred method.