Beginner Crochet Tools & Tips

Welcome everybody to the Creative Crochet Corner live Q and A. If you are new to this brand, Creative Crochet Corner is your online resource for all things crochet, where you can find everything that you need from basic instruction to advanced techniques. Now, my name is Leah and I am your moderator. Got a couple of things to point out to you before we dig into your questions today. First of all, Creative Crochet Corner will stream live once a month for an hour to answer all of your crochet questions. And if you're viewing on the website, make sure you submit your questions and comments into the chat box below the video player. You can also participate by submitting your questions in the chat on Facebook or YouTube. Also, if you just want to say hello and let us know where it is that you are viewing from, we like to see where everybody is joining our stream from. We've got a great community and lots of fun can happen in that comment section as well. So don't be afraid to drop in a hello, even if you don't have a question. Now, you have the questions, we have the answers and the person providing those answers is about to join us right now. You might recognize her from Craftsy, or previous live tutorials on our Facebook page. You want to make sure to follow us. We are bringing on today, our crochet instructor and managing editor of the Creative Crochet Corner, Brenda KB Anderson. Brenda welcome, we are so excited to have you join us. I'd love for you to tell us a little bit about yourself and give us a little preview into today's free pattern that's available for all of our viewers. Okay. Hi everybody, I'm so excited to be here and talk about crochet with you all. So I've been crocheting since I was little girl, my mom taught me how to do that. And later she taught me how to knit. And sometime around the time I was maybe about four, she taught me how to sew. So I've been doing all these crafty things for a very long time on and off, and then full tilt into crochet, probably about maybe 10, 15 years ago. I just became very obsessed with it, and I started designing. I've had lots of designs published in magazines and some books and things like that. So very much crochet is in my heart. I love teaching it to people. And yeah, I'm just really excited to talk with you guys about crochet today. So earlier this morning, we had a live crochet event where I taught how to make the glacier cabled beanie, which is what this is here. And it comes in four different sizes. It's really nice squishy cables, it's comfy and cozy. And it's a pretty easy pattern. It's made with worsted weight yarn, which is pretty thick. And if you're new to cabling, I go through all the steps in the video, which you can still watch. You can go back and watch that anytime. So that'll walk you through it and you could make one to. All right, and if you're interested in that free pattern, you can download it right now. It's the glacier cabled beanie. And all you need to do is click the link in the description and you'll have access to that free pattern. That free pattern is yours, but now it's time for your questions. We're going to start them right off the bat, get to as many as we can. And I have a couple of things that I would like to ask you as well. So if you are watching and have an answer to, first of all, this question, what is your experience level? We love to know if we've got beginners, advanced crocheters, anywhere in between so that we just kind of know where all of your questions are coming from. So if you're asking a question, also let us know if you're brand new, how many crochet projects you've done, anything that you would like us to know about you as a crocheter. So, we're gonna get to our first question, which is from a beginner. This is Hannah, and Hannah, she wants to know from Brenda, what would you consider to be something simple to crochet? Looking to get started, brand new. What do you think, Brenda? Hi Hannah, welcome to the crochet group. I'm glad you're gonna be one of us. The simplest thing I think that you can make is a wash cloth, or a dish cloth. I love recommending that to a new crocheters, because you can make something, it doesn't take a ton of time. I mean, you can use it when you're done. And it also does not matter if it looks super crazy, it's still functional, it's still useful. Because when you're first learning, you're gonna make some mistakes. Things are gonna be a little weird looking until you get the hang of it, you know, you got to learn how to hang on to your yarn. How to have the hook be comfortable in your hand. So all these things, you don't want to have to worry so much about the end result and like, am I really gonna wear this when I'm done? But after you've done one dish cloth, then you know, maybe move on to a scarf or a hat or something, or maybe like fingerless mittens or something like that. Anything that's a rectangle is easy. Yeah. Start out a little bit slow with the dish cloth, I think, and then move on after that. That's really great advice, especially for people like me, when I start something I'm like, what is the biggest project that I can start? Dish cloths feels achievable. All right, let's go to our next question here. This one comes in from Caroline. Caroline says the pattern is saying to use a worsted weight yarn, but Caroline only has knitted or crocheted with a four-ply worsted weight. Is that what this is? Because to Caroline, it's looking a little bit chunky. What do you think Brenda? Well, it's probably what it is, but when they recommend a certain yarn in your pattern, you need to work up a gauge swatch, and then you can change the size of your hook, or if you're knitting, your needle, to make your gauge match. And then you can see if you like how that fabric feels, if you think it's gonna make a good, whatever the project is that you're working with. Even if there are two different yarns, there's lots of different yarns, but even when you have two different yarns and they're both labeled with the same thing, they both say, a number four worsted weight yarn, they might be spun a little bit differently. Maybe they have a different, they're made out of different fibers. There's so many, many, many variables that make a yarn have the characteristics that it does. So you won't, it's a good rule of thumb to look for the same weight yarn. You know, look for a number four, you start with that. And then you can do a gauge swatch and see if you like how it's turning out, to match the gauge of whatever it is that you're making. If the fabric that results from that is something that you think would make a good, whatever that project is. So basically what I'm trying to say is that, even though it's labeled a number four, sometimes you could use a number five or sometimes a number three, depending on how you get gauged and what the fiber content is. But the number four is the place to start and you probably do have the right yarn. But if you're saying that it's turning out too thick, then I'm not sure if that means you need to go down a hook size or needle size and see what that turns out. If that's too stiff and you don't like how it looks, then maybe find a different yarn for that particular project. Maybe they used a worsted weight that was a little bit thinner, and you're using a worsted weight that's a little bit on the thicker side. So that could be what's happening, too. Hope that helps. All right, and always specify. If Brenda has an answer that you want a little more detail on, you can always drop a little extra into the chat box. We can revisit questions with the time that we have. Let's move onto something a little bit fun here. We're pulling in some of our comments from our Instagram community as well. And this is about the crochet goals that all of the people in the community have for 2022. So I'm gonna share some now. and then Brenda, I'm gonna ask for yours. And everybody that's watching, if you want to drop yours in the comment box as well. So here we'll get started with a few. We've got, I'm looking forward to learning new patterns and making little baby dresses, also to have a brand and teach girls, make a cardigan for myself, socks and cute key chains. Someone's out there looking to complete the new sweater that was just started yesterday. And then also to make all of the designs that I had sketched and to improve on my stitches, and finally, make much more cute stuff for me to feel proud of myself for making. So those are some people on Instagram's 2022 goals. Brenda, what do you have that you're wanting to conquer in 2022 in terms of your crocheting? Well, for me, okay. So I would like to try, I've never designed anything in filet crochet, and I would really like to do that, so I'm interested in that, as far as a new technique for me. The other thing, the main thing though, is that I want to learn how to manage my crochet time a little bit better. I take on a lot of stuff because I get so excited, and then I have like a million things that I want to do. And then I get kind of lost in, oh, what if I did this and what if I did that? And then like a million projects later, I'm like, oh, I should really be, I've been working on that. So I think I need to just kind of organize my crochet life a little bit more. That's kind of the boring answer, but yeah, I do want to learn more about filet crochet and design something in that, because I've never done that before. I've been kind of obsessed with cables and crochet color work in the last couple of years. And I think I need a new focus. We've got some enthusiasm for that filet crochet from Jen in the comments. So Jen also is looking forward to finishing the two granny square blankets that she's been working on for years. So some finishing is in the works for 2022. And then Hannah has the question that I was wondering myself. Brenda, would you let us all know what filet crochet is? Oh sure. Okay, so it's a style of making crochet that's like a lace where you normally you work from a chart. It looks like a piece of graph paper and there are some squares that are colored in and some squares that are not. And what you're doing is you're making taller stitches, like double crochets or half double crochets. And then you make a number of chains and you skip a couple stitches and you make another taller stitch. And that leaves a little window there, so you can see the light through it, like a hole in lace. And then there are some sections where you fill in those windows. So you'll be working, a stitch, a stitch, a stitch, or sometimes four in a row. It just sort of depends. Basically, it's a way of making lace with, I like to think of it as like little squares and sometimes they're filled in and sometimes they're not, and you can make really cool patterns out of that. All right, let's talk a little bit more about stitches. One, this is something that I would love to ask our audience about as well. What types of specialty stitches might you want to see Brenda demonstrate live? Because we're lining all of those live demonstrations up for the year, and we want to know what it is that you would benefit the most from. Brenda, I was hoping you would tell us a little bit about a specialty stitch, either that you've already done a tutorial for, or something that you're excited to do a tutorial for in the future. Sure. Well, my next live event, I hope it's okay if I mention this already, is learning about thrumming. Okay, I love teaching new techniques. And when I learn a new technique, I get really obsessed about it. Try a bunch of different things, learn as much as I can. And then I like to make a project with it, and then teach that to other people, 'cause I feel like I learn things the most thoroughly when I realize I'm going to teach it to someone else, because I have to know enough to be able to do that. So I've been sort of studying how to do thrumming, which I don't know if, if you guys have heard of thrumming. It's a little bit more prevalent in the knitting community. It's basically, as you stitch along, and you're making something, usually a hat or mittens or something you want to add extra warmth to, you add a little piece of fluffy roving, which is just like a piece of unspun fleece. You just knit that or, in this case, crochet it into the work. And so on the outside, you see a little bit of the thrum, like a fleece kind of, it looks like a piece of yarn, looks like a piece of one play yarn. And it usually it makes a little heart shape, but if you're doing it in crochet, there's other ways you can do it if you want, but it makes a little heart shape on the outside. And then on the inside of your work, there's this big tuft of wooly fluffiness. And then when you wear it, it felts, and it makes this awesome fleecy layer that is super, super warm. And since today it is blue below zero, here, there is definitely a need for that, but it's a really exciting technique. So I've been working on that. And before that I had been working on, like I said before, I was kind of obsessed with color work and there are now a couple of instructional technique videos on the CCC about different ways to use different types of stitches in your color work. And there's some examples that I put in there too, but yeah, I was definitely in color work land for a long time. I got really obsessed with it. Like making color work yolk sweaters, and all kinds of things, but yeah, that and then cables, which I love. Yeah. All the techniques, I love it all. Exactly, and keep an eye out for more. I believe you're talking Brenda to this next Creative Crochet Corner live project tutorial is going to be on Tuesday, January 18th at 9:30, that's 9:30 a.m. central time. So if you're watching and excited about that, mark your calendars, you're not going to want to miss it. I'll remind you again about that at the end of our time together, but get it marked down, make sure that you can go for that next tutorial. All right, we're going to move on to our next topic here. And this is kind of similar, so we talked a little bit about specialty stitches. Brenda, I know you really like to design patterns and create things and then bring them into live demos. What types of patterns are you working on? If you want to share us a little bit of what you've got in the works for the year, and then again, this is another one for our audience. Are there any kinds of patterns you want to see Brenda bring to a live tutorial? You can drop that in the comment box as well. Brenda, what do you think? Yes, please let us know, 'cause I am very curious about what you guys are interested in learning. I mean, those are the things that I want to teach. So tell me, make suggestions, ask me to make things. I love designing spontaneously. But yes, I have been, well, if you take a look at all of the things, I have like more than 300 designs that have been published and I definitely have delved into cables and color work and lace and kind of all over the place. But also with toys. I come from a background, for many, many years I worked in the costume industry, where I made full body costumes, like the kind of costumes that you look at and say, is there a person in there? I couldn't even tell there's a person in there, but like character costumes, mascots, those types of things. Those are the things that I developed. So I learned how to make, I learned a lot about just aesthetics, just by looking at things every single day, just about faces and facial expressions and what makes things cute. And I used a lot of those things in my crochet designs for making toys. Now, I feel like I'm getting off topic. Leah, can you reign me in here? It's okay if you're making toys, that might be something that's interesting to our viewers. I do know, to kind of keep it on topic here, correct me if I'm saying this wrong, amigurumi? Yeah. I know that that's something that you've been really interested in, and I've seen that be kind of like exploding in projects people want to make. Can you talk a little bit about what those are, and also what's age appropriate? Like what age would you gift a toy like that to somebody? How young can you go? Okay, that's a good question. Okay, so basically that's just the style of making really cute little stuffed toys. It's like basically making, crocheting stuffed animals is all that amigurumi really means. And as far as like the age to give kids their toys, it depends on what you're adding to the toy, and how it's going to be used. And also what kind of baby you have, if you have the baby that's going to chew on eyes like most babies do you need to be really careful, and not give them an amigurumi that has buttons or anything they could bite off, you know, even safety eyes, which are the brown plastic eyes that you see in most amigurumi or a lot of amigurumi toys. They have a washer and an anchor in the back and they are pretty tough to get out, and they're called safety eyes, I think because of that. But secretly they're not safe enough to give to a kid who still puts things in their mouth and might swallow it. So you really shouldn't give them something that has anything that they can bite off and eat. But you can embroider eyes on there. You know, there are other ways to get around it, still make eyes for your creature. I love designing amigurumi. I just, especially, I mean, as you're working on it, it's so fun and you make these cute little things, you stuff them, and then when you do the face, it's like magic happens. And I don't know if there's anybody out there who's watching this who made one, and oh my gosh, that was the most frustrating part. I get lots and lots of questions from people about like, why does this face look so weird? How can I make a cuter face? Why isn't this working? You know, I can see a picture. I don't understand. But I have learned ways to kind of break it down. You just have to really look at the proportion, how far the eyes are apart, where they're set. Especially if it's something that has like an eye white and a pupil, wherever you put that pupil in there, if they are not in the right spot compared to each other, it might look like an eye is drifting off somewhere. If there is white on the inside and dark on the outside, that makes their eyes look kind of like creepy zombies. Some people do that and don't realize, and of course you can do any of this intentionally. Maybe you want to have a creature that looks kind of creepy or kind of crazy, and that's like the fun of it. You know, you're designing it. You're making this new being that feels, it really feels like it comes to life. Once you put that face on, it just feels like you actually made a living little thing. It's pretty awesome. I love making amigurumi. Can you tell? I really can, it makes me excited. I want to go try it next. All right, I'm gonna ask you two tools-related questions. The first one, pretty basic. I know we do have a couple of beginners that are watching right now. So anybody that's looking to get started, what would you recommend that they go and get in order to be budget conscious, but also have the tools they would need for their first project, maybe the dish cloth that you mentioned earlier? Well, that's the really awesome thing about crochet, is it really does not take a lot of money. It doesn't take a big investment to start crocheting. Really, you can just get one ball of yarn and one hook and have a pair of scissors. They don't even need to be fancy little scissors for knitting or crocheting or anything like that. They could just be like regular scissors to cut your yarn. That's all you absolutely need. But you know, if you're looking to branch out or maybe you're gifting to someone or you just want to have some extra tools, I would say, oh, and let me go back to the hook thing. Hooks are, those are one of those things that you're not really necessarily gonna know which hook you like until you start using different hooks. There are hooks out there that have ergonomic, like little rubbery handles like this one. And I love that, it helps me hold onto the hook without like clenching really tightly. Because it's kind of sticky, it doesn't slip in my hand and it fits it really nice. So that's one of those things I would recommend, looking for something like this, but that's not gonna be everybody's favorite. Some people just like the plain metal hook all the way, or plastic or bamboo, there's different types. I would say if you're just starting out, buy a hook and then if you start working the stitches and you're like, I kind of like this, but you know, maybe the hook isn't super, super comfortable. Maybe try to get a couple of different hooks in different materials, so you can try out some different things and see how they feel. Really I feel like the tools for crochet is mostly centered around hooks and getting a hook that you like. But then there are all these extra little doodads when you get a little bit more into it. You can get little stitch markers. These are lacking stitch markers and they have, it's basically like a little tiny plastic, almost like a safety pin. You close it and you can keep track of your stitches, if you're crocheting something and you need to go, you know, stop and go make dinner, you can put your stitch marker through there like that. And then it won't undo itself. Nobody can come over and just accidentally pull on that and undo all your hard work. And so these are a great thing for keeping track of where you're at in the pattern, marking certain things, marketing the right side, the wrong side. If you don't want to spend money yet, and you are not quite sure you can always use like a bobby pin or a safety pin or something else instead of a stitch marker. But these are very inexpensive, so I recommend getting some of those, and you'll want to have something to measure with. You'll need a ruler or a little tape measure. I like this little retractable tape measure, which is fun. You can just drop it in your bag, for measuring a gauge swatch. So figuring out if your size hat is as you yourself, crochet with your own, the way that you do things, if it's gonna turn out the same size as the person who designed the pattern, you need to check your gauge. So in order to do that, you're gonna need either a tape measure, or what I like to use is, you know, a wooden ruler, because you just plunk it down onto your piece. You don't have to, I mean, this works just fine. You know, you can lay it down like this, but, if you're gonna have all the tools, you can get like a little wooden ruler or metal ruler, cause it's a little easier just to check your gauge. They actually make gauge checking tools too, that have a ruler on maybe two sides and a little window, so you can check your gauge that way if you want to. Yeah and then, you know, as far as, if you want to move up and get some extra tools, I love using my yarn scale. So a yarn scale is basically just like a little sensitive, like a kitchen scale. It measures smaller increments of weight. And what I do with that is, I'm always playing yarn chicken and I have like some yarn and I'm not really sure if it's gonna be enough for something. And then I can use that to help me determine like how much yarn do I have left on the ball, things like that. 'Cause you can look at the label and figure out how much a total ball weighed, and then you can weigh what you have and figure out what percentage that is, all that stuff. But anyway, if you are the kind of person who maybe you don't know where your label is, or maybe you have a lots of partially use gains and you want to know how much you have, a yarn scale is a really great tool to have, if you need to figure that kind of stuff out. Well, you actually answered my second question as well there. I was going to say for anybody that's looking to expand their toolkit, what are some neat tools that you could recommend? So you just gave us quite a list. So I think that's good for the tool questions right now. We'll get into a very specific one next, and this comes in from Joan. So Joan wants to know if there is a rule of thumb when crocheting a circle as to how often or how many stitches go in between the increased stitches. Joan's trying to make disk scrubbies, and the pattern is not telling specifically what to do. Oh, that's weird. Okay, so if you're making a flat circle, you don't want it to cup or be wavy, then you, if you're gonna make it in single crochet, you will make an adjustable loop for the middle, or you can do like a chain three and then work into the first chain for all of your stitches. And then you're gonna start out with six single crochet stitches. And then the next round, you're gonna increase that by six. So that means in round number two, you do two single crochets in each of those six stitches. So that means you end up with 12, and then on the third round, you're gonna increase by six stitches again. You do that for every round. If you want a nice flat single crochet circle, every single round, you add six stitches to it. So if you want your circle to, if you want it to make it easy to count, and you don't mind that it gets a little faceted, it will start looking a little bit like a hexagon. Yeah, that's the one with six sides. Okay, so everywhere you make your increases, if you make an increase in the first stitch, and then you stitch along until the very first stitch of the increase from the following round and they can increase there. If you do that for every round, you're gonna have your increases stacked up on top of each other, and it's gonna start to become a little bit faceted where all those, like, what I mean by faceted is like little corners where all the increases are, which is totally fine. And you can block that out. And if you're making a dish cloth or whatever, that's great, like you don't need to worry about it, but if you're making a toy and you don't want it to have that obvious increase thing, then you just need to make sure that you're doing six increases, and you can do them randomly in there. One thing that helps me when I making circles is I'll put six stitch markers in there, and then I'll know I have to do an increase between each set of stitch markers. And if you put them in a different place each round, then your circle is going, your eye won't be led to where the increases are, they all kind of blur together, and it'll become more of like a perfect circle. You're not gonna be able to see like lines of increases, 'cause they're not gonna stack up on top of each other, if that makes sense. So if you're doing, sorry, this answer is very long. If you're doing something that's a taller stitch, like the double crochet, you're gonna need more increases, because you're adding height to each round. So each, if you imagine each round being a ring around the circle, the rings are gonna be thicker. They're gonna be wider with the taller stitches. So you're gonna need to add more increases in there for the taller stitches. I think it's, is it eight? Mm, that might be right. Eight might be for half double crochet or extended single crochet, I think per round. And then for double crochets, it might be 12, but I am not totally sure, but you probably would be able to find that information with like a little web search. But for single crochets, six stitches per round. All right, so that's your basic rule of thumb and then go from there. Hopefully that helps Joan, good luck with your scrubbies. We have to take a little pause to say hello to Dawn. Dawn is sharing that Dawn has been crocheting for over 50 years. So thank you for watching Dawn. Hopefully you will learn some new tips. And then also if there's any questions that people have in the comment box that Dawn, with all of your experience, you have a little bit of insight into, we would love for you to comment anything that you have that you'd like to share as well. Laurel has a question next. Well, more of a comment, but our free tutorial is exactly this stitch. So Laurel says, I just can't seem to get the cabling stitch right. So you just talked about this earlier this morning. So, Brenda, do you want to talk a little bit about the cable stitch? Sure. Yeah. So when you're making cables, there's actually lots of different cable stitches you can make. I mean, the possibilities are endless, so I'm not sure if you're having trouble with the very specific cabling stiff stitch, or if it's just the idea of the cables, just maybe they're just not working out, but how convenient is this that I just happen to have a cable project right here. The main thing about cables is that as you're working your cable, you're usually making raised stitches where the cable part is. So for example, here, where you can see these bits going to the side here, those are all raised stitches. These are front post double crochets and front post treble crochets. So you'll have some sort of raised stitch, and then you'll have some sort of background stitch, whatever that is. And this hat it's extended single crochet. And I'm working in the round here, but you might be working back and forth in rows. That's fine, too. There's lots of ways to cable, but basically the main gist of it when you're cabling is you're working your rounds or your rows, you're working your post stitches, usually into your post stitches. You're making these raised areas. And then when you do this crossing thing, you're actually skipping some stitches. And then you're working, these stitches were worked over here at this angle. And then after you work that, we work these stitches over here at this angle to connect to where you had skipped before. So you're basically just messing around with where you're anchoring your stitches to. Instead of putting it into the next stitch that comes up, you might skip some, make some stitches over here, and then you usually go back to stitch into the ones that you skipped. So if you're having trouble making your cables, it may be that you are missing your stitches. Maybe you're not quite finding those stitches again, or there's something that confuses a lot of people, is called working behind the stitches you just made. So usually that's the language you'll see in, usually that's the language that you'll see in the pattern. It'll say something like working in front of the stitches you made, or working behind the stitches that you made. So what that means, let me just back up here and show you, here's a cable right here where we worked. Let's see, I'm just gonna back this up. We worked some post stitches right here, and we skipped these two stitches. Then we worked some stitches into these stitches. Then in this particular pattern, we work behind the stitches we just made, which is, this is very confusing to a lot of people. So we're gonna, we're doing a front post treble crochet here. And instead of working around these posts like this, that would be working in front of the stitches you made, 'cause here's your stitches. Instead, we're going to work behind, so you can put your hook behind those and behind these. But another way to look at it is if you kind of fold those stitches down, here's the stitches that we've already made, we're gonna work behind those, into these posts that we skipped, like this. So this could be, maybe this is what's confusing you, it's kind of hard to know, 'cause there's so many different ways to make cables, and there's so many different stitch patterns to use, but see how I made those two stitches and they go behind those stitches. Then over here in this pattern, we still skip some stitches, work a couple of stitches over here like this. And then we're gonna work in front. I'll show you what working front of your stitches means. So we're gonna, instead of going back behind, like we did before, we're gonna just go around this post in the front, like that. And sometimes in between your rows, you're working into every single stitch. Sometimes you're skipping things. It just really depends on what the stitch pattern is that you're doing. But I hope that that helps you. I think a lot of people get confused about the working behind, working in front, but basically cables are just, you're just working your stitches out of order. You're reaching further ahead, and then you're kind of going back behind and catching up on some things that you skipped and that's mostly all there is to it. And oh, one other thing that does confuse a lot of people is when you get to the next round after you've worked your, where your cables cross each other like that, sometimes people can't tell what stitch to work into next. So let me catch up here. So on the next round, we're gonna just work into the stitches as they come up. So there's a stitch, there's a stitch, even though these stitches came from over here, we're looking at the tops of the stitches to know which ones are next. See, and then you can see here's the next top of the stitch, so you can go around that post. You want to be careful not to miss the stitches that are kind of hiding out behind. So that's another thing that people find very tricky is, you know, once you cross over all this stuff, they can't tell where their hook is supposed to go anymore. But if you just look at the top and see the stitches as they come up, look at the top edge, find the top of the stitch, figure out what post belongs to that, it's the post right below, and then work around that post. All right, and as a reminder, the specific project that Brenda was just showing. There's a free pattern available for download, and the tutorial that she did this morning, like she mentioned, you can go back and watch that as well on the Creative Crochet Corner. So all your cabling questions, well not all of them, but a lot of them could be answered with that tutorial. So hopefully that will help as well. Let's go on next here to Haley. Haley is from Sugarland, Texas, and is a beginner, and wants to know about the gauge swatches. So you mentioned this before. When you create a gauge swatch, do you always use a single crochet stitch? I use the same yarn and hook number, but it came out way too big. What are your thoughts on that? Okay, so the gauge swatch is gonna tell you what size, basically what your end product would turn out like. If your gauge swatch is too big and then you followed the pattern, it would end up way too big when you finish the pattern. So you're gonna want to make your gauge swatch in whatever stitch pattern it is that's the main part of the pattern. Usually the pattern will tell you what stitch pattern to make your gauge swatch in. Patterns should tell you that, they should tell you, so many stitches and so many rows of half double crochet worked in this particular way equals four inches, or something like that. Like it should tell you the stitch pattern. If it doesn't, then just find one part of the pattern where you know what the stitch pattern is, maybe the whole blanket's in double crochet or something like that, or moss stitch or whatever. Whatever the thing is you're making, you should make your gauge swatch out of that. So the gauge swatch will tell you what the designer's gauge was, and what gauge you need to end up with in order to end up with the correct size. So if you make the gauge swatch, like you said, and it ends up way too big, that's okay, you're not doing anything wrong. Like everybody crochets differently. Some people hold on to things in a tighter way, some people looser. There's so many different motions involved in crocheting. People have different gauges, it's totally fine. So when you do that, you end up with a gauge swatch that's too big. What you need to do is you need to grab a smaller hook, and whatever you use to get that, and do it again and check it. And you keep going down sizes until you get to the correct size. Although if it's like way too big, then go down a couple of hook sizes before you swatch again, like, you know, if you were using an I hook or like, yeah, if you were using an I hook, you could go down to an F hook. If it was just like enormous or something like that. So, don't feel bad, you don't need to feel bad about not getting the gauge on the first try. That's why we make gauge swatches. We're just doing a little test and figuring out, okay, this is what the fabric is supposed to look like. This is how it's supposed to feel. You know, once you get the gauge swatch, you'll be able to see that what it's supposed to be like. So gauge is really important. You do need to check it. There are ways to sneak around checking part of your project as you're working. But I always recommend, especially when you're starting out, just make the gauge swatch like it says in the pattern, it should tell you how many stitches, how many rows, and then just keep using different hooks. If it's too small, use a bigger hook. If your gauge swatch ends up too big, use a smaller hook. All right, while we're talking about sizing, we have two people that have the same question here. First it came in from Gail. Gail is a beginner and a self-learner, that's watching YouTube, and Gail is wanting to know, when you talk about measuring stitches, can you explain what you mean when you measure stitches? And then Heidi jumped on to say, me too, I want to know that answer as well. Okay, I'm guessing this is from earlier when I was talking about the tools that you need. So when you're measuring your stitches, what I meant was like, when you're checking your gauge swatch, if you're making a pattern and it says, you know, you need 20 single crochet stitches and 18 rows to make four inches, right? So then you would get out your tape measure your ruler, and you figure out what your 20 stitches is. So you count them one two three four five six seven eight nine 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20. So that would be from here to here. So if that was supposed to be four inches long, then, what you know, from looking at this is that it ended up a little too big. Sorry, I hope this isn't confusing, 'cause this isn't actually a gauge swatch. I'm just showing you on this hat. But the 20 stitches started and ended here and here. So here's the four inches line. So it ended up bigger than the four inches. So if that happens, you would need to go down a hook size. And if you're measuring your rows, you know, you'll put your ruler this way and you figure out, this is called a yarn over a slip stitch to the back loop only, that's what the stitch pattern is, but you know, whatever your stitch pattern is, you'll have to learn how to recognize how many rows there are there. It can be a little tricky when you're first learning, but without having a bunch of samples to show you, when you're looking at whatever you're making, just pay attention to what it looks like when you do one row. And then when you do a second row, look at both sides of your work, and then you'll start to recognize, like, when you look at it, just what the stitch pattern looks like, how to count your rows. So for example, for this particular stitch, you're gonna do, if you were counting the rows, you could line it up here at the zero mark. This is one row. This is another row, another row, another row. So one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17. That's like, really 16 and a half or so rows per four inches. So I think I said something like 18 or whatever. I don't remember what I said, but you would compare how many rows per four inches that you got compared to the gauge swatch that's given to you in the pattern. So basically your ruler is telling you how many stitches you have crammed in a certain given amount, a certain measurement. So that way you can compare it to whatever the designer wrote down for how many stitches they had per four inches. So that way you can compare, otherwise you'd have no way of knowing when you're stitching back and forth, if it's gonna turn out the right size, or the size intended, without having some way to check it against the designers gauge. All right, we've got a next question coming in from Ashley, and Ashley wants to know how you crochet into your finished projects. How to crochet into a finished project. I wonder, do you mean, I'm not really sure what that means. Like as you worked on a project and then later you wanted to add a border maybe? I wonder if that's what you mean? Like when you're working on a blanket. Okay, I'm just gonna guess that's what you mean, but if you could reply and clarify just a little bit what you mean by crocheting into a finished project, but I think this might be what you mean. Let me guess. So say for example, you were making a little pot holder or a dish cloth, and then you went back and forth on a bunch of turn rows, and then you look at the edge and it looks kind of bumpy, and you want to put a nice border around the edge to smooth it out, make it look very finished. So I'm guessing you're having a question of how to know how to work into your row ends. So when you learn to crochet, you learn where the stitch is and where you're supposed to put your hook every time. You look at the stitch and you have this nice little V that you put your hook under, right? You know where they're supposed to go. But then if you're crocheting around the edge, you're making an edging on something, you'll be working down your row ends, and okay, so here here's your row ends. And this stitch pattern, it looks very uniform because of the stitch pattern is. Depending on what you're doing, it might be really bumpy and like a little zig-zaggy or it might not be quite so, I don't know, like geometric looking as this. So you might not know where to put your hook. So as you're working across there, if you put too many stitches in, your edge'll start waving back and forth. If you don't put enough stitches in, it'll start like squishing in the edge of your stitch, and it will kind of cup and it won't lay very nicely. So if you fold your piece, like this, and you look at this measurement here, it's the same as this measurement here. So you can count how many stitches you had here for that length and put that amount of stitches, the same amount of stitches across here. That's sort of like a little cheater way of figuring out how to know how evenly to space your stitches. So say for example, this was like 20 stitches here. You fold it that way. So you'd put 20 stitches across here in the same amount of space. So that way, you know it's not gonna be wavy or whatever. So if you were gonna do that, you would put a stitch marker here, for example. Let's just say, we're just gonna put a little border right here. So we have this space and we're putting 20 stitches here. Well, it's hard to know exactly where to put all these stitches. If you put another stitch marker in the middle, then you know you have 10 stitches here, and ten stitches here. And then if you further divide that, you have five stitches here, five stitches here, five here and five here. So if you keep dividing up the edge with your stitch markers, it'll help you space your stitches. And if you don't know where exactly to insert your hook, you can put it really anywhere close to the edge. And I look for places where there isn't already a big hole. You might think, oh, there's a hole there, I'm gonna fill that with a stitch, it'll fill it all in. But a lot of times, if there's already a hole there and then you put another stitch in it, it makes the hole even bigger. Like it does the opposite of what you would think. So usually I'm looking for places that are a little more dense to put my crochet hook. And for some stitch patterns, you can do something very regular, like for this hat, in my pattern we stitch into here. And then we stitch into here, stitch into here, stitch into here, because it just happens to work out that it's the right amount of stitches for how many row ends we have. So that's not always gonna happen, but that's why I was explaining about marking off your piece. I hope that I answered your question. If I didn't please jump back in and let me know a little more information. Yeah, Ashley actually did. So this is specifically about if you make a rectangle, for example, and you want to turn it into a cross shape by adding onto the side. So say you have the vertical rectangle already. Ashley's talking about if you want to start building out one side of the cross and then the other side of the cross. Does that make sense? Yep, it makes sense. Yep, so if you're making your own pattern or you're kind of figuring this out, you know, you don't have anyone telling you exactly what you're supposed to be doing. A pattern should tell you how to do that. But if you have a rectangle, say you have a rectangle here and you want to start just stitching this way across. If you don't want to make a piece and sew it on which is an option, you can just start working back and forth. Okay, so this kind of depends on if, okay, so this was worked back and forth in this direction. And if you wanted to have a little section coming out here and you wanted to work it back and forth like this, you would just start working into here, like I just described. You figure out how many stitches you need here, like I was just describing. So you work across and then chain however many your turning chain was from whatever the rectangle you made was like, and you can just start working back and forth at that point. So basically you need to map out how wide your piece is at that point, wherever you want it to come off of there, and figure out how wide you want that rectangle to be. You can use what you already made, the rectangle that you already made. You can use that to figure out how many stitches to put in there. Because say, for example, if this was your rectangle and you wanted a little rectangle like this size, you would already know just by looking at this, you can just measure and be like, okay, you know, I need 10 more stitches, so I'm gonna put them over here. So then you mark out your section and go back and forth for your 10 stitches. And it's so simple with crochet. You just, you know, start stitching into your row ends how I was describing. And then you just go back and forth and back and forth. You can just build off of what you already made super easily. If it was something where you were crocheting here, and then you just wanted a little strip coming off of that, you'd go back and forth and back and forth, and at some point you just stop partially and go back and forth here. That's the easy way. But if I'm assuming that you mean, you've made this rectangle and then you don't know how to stitch, how to add onto where your row ends are basically to go back and forth from there, so I hope that answers your question. All right, I'll keep an eye out for any more clarification, just in case. I do want to put a little alert out there. We are nearing, we're not at the end of our time, but we're getting close, so if you are hanging on to a question for Brenda and you haven't asked it yet, this is the time to drop it in. We'll get to as many of these last questions as we can. But of course, like I said at the beginning, we will be back every month with one of these hours. So if you have to hang on to your question for the next time, that's okay too. Let's go to Rosa's question next. Rosa is an intermediate crocheter, and is looking for any good tools that you could recommend to prevent yarn from tangling. What do you think on that, Brenda? Tangling, okay. So I would recommend, I guess it depends on how your yarn is coming off of your, if it's a ball or skein or whatever, but I recommend getting a yarn bowl. If you have a ball of yarn and then you put your yarn ball in there, and then sometimes it'll have like a little, either a hole or a little loop, and then as you pull your yarn will just spin around in there. That's a really great way for it to not tangle. Otherwise, some people will put, I think it's called like a yarn briar or something. It's like a mesh. You can buy these. I don't actually have one, but there's some sort of like a little mesh, almost a bag that you can put around your yarn, so that's supposed to help keep it from looping up and getting tangled as it's coming off of there. Also, there's another tool and I am not exactly sure what the name of this is. It's kind of like a lazy susan. We're gonna have to Google this one, or maybe crowdsource this one. It's basically like a lazy susan, and there's a spindle in it. And so if you have a yarn cake like this, you can slip it on top of there, and then as you pull your yarn off like this, the lazy susan thing will just twirl around and your yarn can spin as it comes off. And the thing that's really cool about that is that it doesn't add more twist or subtract twist or whatever from your yarn, it just comes off. And so sometimes when your yarn is tangling, it's because you're pulling it off and it's kind of getting too much twist and it's twisting back on itself. So those are nice for that. Although I can not remember the name of those, but I'm sure a quick search on the internet, you can find, you know, find something like lazy susan yarn holder or something like that. I know that's not the name, but that is a good way to have your yarn not tangle too. Also, I have actually seen people just use a bowl, like a regular bowl, if you don't want to buy a yarn bowl, and then you can put a piece of plastic wrap, like saran wrap over the top to keep your yarn from just jumping out and leave a little gap or make a hole in it to pull your yarn through, and that can help keep your yarn from getting tangled too. All right. I actually pulled up quite a few search results for just crochet lazy susan. So it's at least a good starting point if you're looking for something like that. You can find some Etsy, some basic craft shops have them online as well, just with that search. So that's a good starting point, Brenda. All right, let's go into, this next little conversation has kind of been happening on this side in the comments. I want to highlight a few things here. So we asked if anyone had received or gifted crochet tools or yarn for the holidays, and Ashley received some crochet hooks and some yarn, Dawn received some money to purchase yarn and probably other supplies as well. Brenda, I'm wondering if you received any cool crochet items or maybe any just crafting items that you really love this Christmas, this holiday season. I got a friendship bracelet from my niece, is the crafted item that I got this year for Christmas. I think people know better than to give me yarn, only because I have so much yarn. Like anyone who knows me really well, they probably wouldn't think that I needed more yarn. They're probably not gonna do that, even though I would love it. I don't think my husband would, but yeah. And I already have a lot of hooks, but I have to say, even if I already have hooks and things like that, I still get really excited if I get a new, special crochet gadget thing. But I think most of the people who know me pretty well are like, yeah, I think she's got that covered. We don't really need to contribute to her yarn hoarding situation. So, but yes, my niece she's very into crochet, and she also has been learning how to make these little friendship bracelets. She's very crafty and she made me this really awesome friendship bracelet. So, I love it. I should be wearing it, but maybe next time I'll remember. All right, well, like I said, we are nearing the end of our time today. So I'm gonna share a couple more final thoughts from Dawn. She did drop in. She's still learning new techniques and stitches, but also I really like this little piece of advice from Dawn. Don't be too hard on yourself. It's not perfect. No one will notice. Your projects are supposed to be fun and they're supposed to look homemade. So Dawn, thank you for sharing a little bit of your expertise today with us. I am going to give you Brenda the floor for a moment, I'd you to tell all of our viewers where they can find you, maybe speak about all the social media places where they can find you and the Creative Crochet Corner and any final thoughts that you have before I finish us off with a couple of reminders for this month. Floor's yours, Brenda. Yes, I really like what Dawn said. It is super important to just not be hard on yourself. It is supposed to be fun and that, yeah, we have to keep that in mind, especially when you get frustrated. Crochet can be hard, you know, it can be frustrating at times, because you're learning a new thing. Thank you so much for that reminder. Yes. So you can find me on Ravelry. My name is Yarnville on Ravelry, and I have a blog, it's called, actually I haven't added too much to my blog lately but, Craftplosion is the name of my blog, so you can check it out. Sorry, I was thinking about something else while I was saying that, I shouldn't be doing that. And I have been spending most of my time, most of my online time, teaching at the Creative Crochet Corner. So I've been making videos over there and writing blog posts, and I love doing that. I like connecting with people through crochet in that way. Yeah, so if you want to look me up, I usually respond to my Ravelry messages pretty frequently. And I'll be back here in a couple of weeks teaching the thrummed mitten tutorial, and I hope that you guys come back and join me for that, 'cause it's pretty exciting. Yes, indeed. We would love to see you again, and definitely check out the Creative Crochet Corner. I know there's a great Instagram account where you can find some of these things that Brenda is talking about, and working on in the future as well. And of course, make sure to click the link in the description to download the free glacier cabled beanie pattern, just designed by Brenda, and the tutorial will be online for you to view as well. And you'll go join her on Tuesday, January 18th, that starts at 9:30 a.m. central time. That's going to be the next free crochet tutorial that you can jump in on. We would love to see you there. And with that said, I have to say thank you first to Brenda for joining us and sharing all of your expertise. And finally thank all of you, our wonderful audience, for watching. We would love to see you again next time, so keep an eye out for the next time we'll have a Q and A. Jump in on the next tutorial, and until then enjoy all of your crochet projects. My name is Leah. Take care. You're clear Leah. I think I just dropped her. I always feel bad that she's just sitting there. So I just say.