Crochet Techniques and Tips: Beanies, Amigurumi & Christmas Projects

Welcome everybody to our very first Creative Crochet Corner live Q&A. If you are new to the 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'm your moderator. And Creative Crochet Corner will be streaming live once a month for an hour to answer all of your crochet questions. If you're viewing on our website, make sure to submit your questions and comments into the chat box that's below the video player. You can also participate by submitting your questions into the chat on Facebook or YouTube. Now, I like to start things off by asking anybody if you'd like to just try it out even if you don't have a question yet, say hello in the chat box, let us know where it is that you're viewing from. We like to see just how wide our community is for all of these Q&A lives. And we will shout you out, say hello to you as well, and get to, of course, as many questions as possible. Now, today with us, we have our crochet instructor. She is also the managing editor of the Creative Crochet Corner, her name is Brenda K.B. Anderson, and she's joining us today to answer all of the questions that you have live during this Q&A session. You're probably going to recognize her from Craftsy, or you may have seen one of her previous live tutorials on our Facebook page. So make sure to follow us there if you don't already and there will, of course, be more. So with that said, it's time to bring Brenda on. Brenda, welcome. We are so excited to have you join us. I'd love for you to start by telling us a little bit about yourself. Well, I live in Minnesota where it's cold and I was taught to crochet when I was very young by my mother. And I did that for a number of years. I made lots of really horrible outfits for my cabbage patch kids. And then I just kind of forgot all about it. I moved on to sewing and then other things. And then eventually, I circled around in my 20s again and learnt how to crochet and learnt how to knit. And ever since then, I've just been obsessed with it. So I live in a very yarny world. All right, now, Brenda, you also recently hosted that live tutorial for us and it was on how to create that beautiful, Silent Night Christmas tree skirt. I did notice that there is a link in the chat box. If you haven't checked out the chat box yet, and you would like a link to that tutorial, our team has dropped it in for you. You can download that free pattern, click the link in the description. But Brenda, let us know a little bit about that pattern. What inspired you to create it? And how does that live feel? What was it like? Well, when I was thinking about this tree skirt, I'd actually never made a tree skirt ever in my life. I ended up with a tree skirt from my sister that she didn't want anymore and I had that for a long time. It's very pretty, but it has lots of sequins, it's very glitzy. There's nothing wrong with that, I like it, but it doesn't really have anything to do with the rest of the stuff I bring out at Christmas 'cause I have lots of like antiques and old ornaments and my grandpa's old train and things like that that... Things that are really important to me for sentimental reasons that I like to bring out at Christmas and then it seems weird to have this really bright sequiny skirt. So when I was thinking about designing this, I thought about, selfishly, what I would like in my living room. And so I wanted something that was a little more subdued and kind of went with everything else, like it wouldn't be too flashy. And when I was working on it, I was thinking about things, old Christmas memories that I had and I remember sitting in my parents' living room, just in the rocking chair, looking outside their big window facing the backyard where there was all these pine trees and seeing the snow come down. And so you can see that reflected in the tree skirt as well. So doing the live was... Oh, I'm sorry. That's okay. I actually tuned in for a little bit of the live. It was really, really useful, some of those stitches that you were showing. Awesome. Yeah, it's so much fun to be able to do these live videos to teach people things because they can ask, "Hey, can you clarify that part?" It's such a great way to teach and just videos themselves are just... They've been really fun for me to work on because you can show something in a video that takes a whole bunch of paragraphs to explain in the pattern and you can just show it to somebody. It's really an awesome tool for teaching. That was the part that really stuck out to me is if you show me a pattern, sometimes I'm like, "Well, I have to put everything away. There's nothing that I can do to read this." And you were explaining it really, really well. So again, if you are interested in that tree skirt pattern, it is in the chat box. You can click that link, get the pattern, get access to that live tutorial. And then also I wanted to point out, Brenda, you're joining us next week for a Craftsgiving live mini-series and that's with Craftsy. It starts on Monday, November 15th and Craftsy going to be streaming every day at 2:00 p.m central with a different instructor, we'll be crocheting, quilting, sewing, cooking, and decorating cookies. And you'll get step by step demonstrations from those instructors of all of these fun Thanksgiving-themed projects. And Brenda's going to be with us for a live demo on Friday, November 19th at 2:00 p.m central. So we're gonna drop the link into the chat. Lots of links for you to click on today if you're looking for free patterns. But Brenda, I'd love a little preview of what you'll be making with us next week and then we'll start to dig in some questions. So if you're watching and you have some questions, we'll be digging into those shortly, so drop those into the chat box. But first, a little preview of next week. Okay. So next week I'm gonna be teaching people how to make something called the maize beanie. Maize, meaning corn, not M-A-Z-E. But I designed that pattern... For a long time, I've always loved those really chunky knitted looking beanies. And when you try to do that with crochet, you can do it, but it can be really challenging unless you have the perfect yarn for it. When you're using a lot of really thick, bulky yarns, when you're crocheting stitches, just the nature of the stitches, it makes the stitch itself a little stiffer. So it doesn't have that slouchy, nice drapey feel to it unless you make your stitches really big and then there's sometimes holes between the stitches, but... I live in Minnesota and so I really want my hats to be functional and warm. So for a long time, I've been searching for the perfect stitch to use to make something that would be a really thick yarn and really big stitches, but not let all the wind come through and freeze my ears. So I just kind of made up the stitch. I mean, maybe it already exists, but I did a Google search and I looked and I looked and I didn't see anybody inserting their hook into the same spot in the stitch. So I just kind of made up its name for right now. Maybe somebody else will find this exact same stitch out there somewhere, but I looked for a long time. But I'm really excited to show it to people because I actually feel like I really accomplished something 'cause I've been working on this like for a couple of years, really thinking about how you can make that thick yarn have some kind of drape when you're crocheting it, so. All right, well, so if you wanna learn a brand new stitch, come join us next week with Brenda and you'll get to see that live in action. We've got a hello that's dropped into the chat box from Melissa. Melissa is watching from Kentucky, so hello and welcome. Love to see everybody joining us for this first live Q&A. And we also have our first question, so we're going to go right into it, Brenda. First question comes in and is, "I can knit. As for crochet, I don't know how." And I'm going to try to say this correctly, I always stumble on this word. "I am very interested in making amigurumi and how would I begin?" Okay. I love making amigurumi. That is one of my favorite things actually to work on. I have a background in making creatures and toys and cute faces. So that's something that I really love. If you're gonna start, you just need to learn the basics. Mostly, single crochet worked in the round. That's how a lot of amigurumi is worked. And you can just find some basic stitch tutorials. The Creative Crochet Corner has the 14 days to learn how to crochet, which I teach you how to work in the round and how to do single crochet. So you can take a look at that and learn that stitch and really, you just need to learn how to increase and then decrease in that stitch pattern and you can make all kinds of things. So yeah, just dive right in, it is super fun to make toys. And then you don't have to worry if it's gonna fit someone or if it's gonna turn out the exact right size or anything like that. You can just concentrate on getting your stitches in the correct spot and creating the shape that you want. I'm actually gonna use that to jump right into our next question. You said you don't have to worry about it fitting somebody or anything like that, so it feels like that might be a really nice gift for people. And what are you thinking about handmade gifts for your loved ones? Are you planning on making any for the holidays this year? If so, what are you making and have you already started working on them? What's the timeline? Okay. So there's like two versions of me, right? There's my work crochet version of me where I get things done on time because I have to, and then there's the me that just makes the fun projects when I can fit them in, but they're not necessarily for work. So when I can get those two things to overlap, then that's the best 'cause I can get something done actually on time. But if I'm just making something for myself, I am a total procrastinator. I will admit it, I'm a total procrastinator. So right now I've been working on some cowls and those are actually finished, which is kind of a miracle. But other than that, I haven't even thought about what I'm gonna make. I know I'm gonna make some things for my kids, they've been asking for all kinds of things, some toys and that sort of thing, but I haven't even figured that part out yet. Well, I know that we're all kind of starting to look at our calendars and think, yeek. So I think that some of these Craftsgiving crafts, yours as well, might be one of those good gifts to make with a little bit of time crunch. So hopefully people will be tuning in for that. If you are making something crocheting, any gifts for family, you can drop that into the chat box as well. We always love a little bit of crowdsourcing for these Q&As. And then we'll jump into our next question here, Brenda. This is, somebody looking for help with a crochet pattern. They've had it for years, but it's difficult to make without a video. It's a Valladolid shawl, sorry. And then it's inspired by a Mexican town. So do you have any comments on how to kind of deal with a pattern that's difficult to work with and there's maybe no video for? If you're looking for specific help with a specific pattern, if you are a member of the Ravelry community, that's just like an online community where you can post pictures of your projects. It's like a social place where you could interact with other crafters and send messages. If you are a part of Ravelry, if you join Ravelry, which is free, I highly recommend it because if you're looking for specific answers on something like that, you can look up that very pattern and then see all the projects that people have made according to that pattern. And a lot of people will write notes like, "Oh, I had trouble with this part." Or they'll put extra photos in there and you can learn so much. It's a really good resource for finding those little difficult spots if you need some help getting through. And you can even message... A lot of times you can message the designer through that website too then see if they respond. If they're a Ravelry user, they might respond, but... Otherwise, the rest of the people who have worked on that pattern might be able to help you too. Mm-hmm, absolutely. Communities like that, super helpful. And again, our chat box is going to be a little crowdsourced as well. So definitely, even if you don't have a question, check it out. We already have a few suggestions coming in from some viewers here. Let's go on to our next question. This is gonna flip the gift giving on its head, Brenda. What is your best handmade gift that you have received? So not one that you've made and given, one that you've received. Oh, that is a good question. Okay, so if we're talking about like a crocheted thing, my friend Molly made me a really awesome little chalet that's so beautiful and I wear it all the time. But another thing that I really love is gifts from my kids. They're really young and so... But they're learning how to put things together and tying yarn together and calling it crochet. But I love that they're putting all this time into it, they're thinking about it and they're choosing their colors and it's something... I mean, the thing that I find the most important about when people are gifting things that they've made is the fact that they were thinking about you when they made that thing. Like the whole time they were working on it, they were thinking about you. So it's really just like a little reminder, hey, I was thinking about you and I wanted to make you this thing, so. Okay, we're gonna stay general for one more question before digging into a couple of technique questions. And this one comes in from Sharon in Ontario. Hi, Sharon and welcome. So Sharon still enjoys crocheting, mostly Afghans, but my hands won't let me knit anymore. Anybody that's having trouble with their hand dexterity or anything like that, do you have any tips for people that still wanna be involved with the craft, still want to be working with the yarn and things like that, but might need a little bit of an adjustment? Well, I'm not a doctor, so take this with the grain of salt, but when... I actually have the same problem too. I can crochet and crochet and crochet and my hands, luckily, somehow never hurt. But when I knit, something about the way that I hold the needles, it makes my hands hurt and my wrists hurt a little bit after a time. So if you just set a timer or make yourself do stretches every so often, I know it's easy to just keep going, keep going, keep going, but then sometimes it's too late. But if you can do some stretches, for me, doing this, I don't know why, but just doing a little waving like this, somehow that actually helps me stretch out my hand. Like this is where I need to kind of pull on when my hands cramp up from knitting, so I'll do that. You could try that and see if it works, but you might be able to Google hand stretches for knitters or hand stretches for crocheters, and then just see what comes up too. But it is really important to keep stretching, keep your hands warm, maybe have two different projects you're working on, switching back and forth between them if you're doing different motions, it might be helpful to switch back and forth and not just do the same thing for like an hour or two. Yeah, that's right. Some of that repetitive motion can really start to dig in after a while. Good luck. Thank you for those little tips, Brenda. That's really helpful I'm sure for quite a few of our viewers. It's time to get technical though with our next question. So Diana has one coming in here. Diana says, "Hello, when working in rows, do you chain before you turn or after? And is there actually a difference in the end result?" What do you think, Brenda? It doesn't matter whether you chain before or after you flip your work. So whatever seems more natural to you just do that. I was taught to do my chain first at the very end of the row before I flip my piece. So I'll be working along, do-do-do-do-do, get to the end, do my chain, and then for me, I always flip my work like I'm turning a page. I always flip it from right to left. I've noticed that if you are very consistent about the way you do your chain, if you always do it at the end or the beginning, and you always turn your work the exact same way every time, then your edge will look a lot neater than if you do it differently every time. So find yourself a system that works for you, that makes sense for you, and if you do that every time, your edge will be a little bit neater than if you're just kind of like, chain here, flip, next time you chain at the beginning, then you might get confused too like, did I already chain one? Then you have to look at it. So yeah, just find a system that works for you. All right, and this may be just elaborating more on this same idea here from Barbara. So Barbara says in the comments, "I have trouble turning at the last ditch so that my sides look nice and even." Do you wanna speak a little bit to that problem and some possible fixes? Yeah, I think that's exactly what I was just saying. 'Cause if you do your chain at the end and then you flip your work and you always flip it in the same direction, you're working down to the end of your row and then you always turn your work this way, then it will really help. All the stitches will lay the same each time. The reason that it looks kind of wiggly or not super uniform along the edge is because you might be twisting the yarn a slightly different way every other row or something like that. So if you're just super consistent about the way you do it, whether you chain at the beginning or whether you chain at the end, it doesn't make a difference. But what makes a difference is that you do it exactly the same way every single time. All right, so consistency is going to be key for those. Good luck everyone that's working on those straight edges out there. We're gonna go to Dot's question next. Dot is having a problem joining two yarns or threads and making it look neat. Do you have tips for something like that? Okay, I'm guessing you're talking about when you're adding like a new ball. Oh, wait. I'm not sure if you're talking about when you're adding a new ball of yarn and you're joining that. Let me talk about that really quickly first in case that's what you're talking about. As you crochet along and you run out of yarn, you just can choose any point in your last stitch where you do a yarn over to yarn over with the new yarn. And I wouldn't worry too much about whether your yarn tails are hanging to the back of your work or to the front of your work. Actually, doesn't even matter. It could be hanging on the right side of your work and later you just take a needle and tuck it into the wrong side. So just give yourself a little bit of extra length so you know you can weave it in. If you are talking about joining at the ends of your rounds, like if you were working in the round, so you're stitching around in a circle and then you're doing your join, all that means is you're doing a slip stitch to connect your last stitch of the round to the first stitch of your round. It's basically just like sticking your two stitches together, joining them together with a little slip stitch. And if you're having trouble with your joints, I'm guessing you don't necessarily know if you need to work into that on the next row. Maybe when you do your join, you're not sure if that's a stitch or not a stitch or what's going on. So I would say, mark your first stitch and your last stitch, until you start to realize what that actually looks like, like examine your stitches. So when you go around in a circle and then you're gonna join from the last stitch you did to the first stitch, you insert your hook, you yarn over, pull it through, make that join. That join is not a stitch. I know I just said you made a stitch and it's not a stitch. What are you talking about? It doesn't count as a stitch. And all that means is that you don't actually work into your join. So when you make that slip stitch, you slip stitch it, and then you'll... If you turn your work, you're gonna skip that join and start working in the last stitch you made if you're not working in turned rounds, if you're just continuing around and around and around. After you make your join, then you do your turning chain and then you work into that stitch, the same stitch you joined into. So you actually are working into that stitch twice, once to join it and then the next time for another stitch. I hope that clears it up. If it doesn't, get back in the comments and let me know what you meant. That was exactly what I was going to say. So Dot, if you would like any more elaboration or more specific, go ahead and drop a further comment in and we'll revisit this. We do have plenty of time left to get to more questions, so drop that in the comments, but hopefully that was helpful for you. We're gonna move to Dee's question next. Dee says, "Hello, what are you wearing and did you make it?" Brenda, your sweater. Tell us about it. Oh, thank you. I did make it actually. Yup. This sweater is called a satisfaction toggle cardigan. Sometimes it's hard to remember the names of my own designs, but yeah, that's what it's called. You can find it on the WeCrochet website. They're selling the pattern there. It's also in the newest WeCrochet Magazine. But it's really fun sweater to make because it's super simple. It's like a rectangle for each sleeve, a rectangle for the back and then kind of a long strip with little cutouts in it and it's the same stitch the whole time. It's very, very simple. It's deceptively simple. Well, hopefully, oh, some people will be trying that out. It looks very comfortable and very, like you've mentioned, it's cold in Minnesota. It's time to bring out some of those sweaters. Ooh, this is a good question from Namrata. I'm gonna ask it to you, Brenda, but also perfect for our viewers to crowdsource. So Namrata is looking for a recommendation for baby pattern books. What would you start her out with? Hmm. I don't know if I know the title of very many baby pattern books. I'm not very good at remembering those kinds of things, but yeah, maybe somebody who's watching might recommend something that they really like. Absolutely. I know that's a really common way to get into gift giving that's not holiday-based. So any viewers out there that have any favorite baby pattern books, go ahead and drop those in the comments. We'll keep an eye out for those. Actually, there is the Crocheted One-Skein Wonders. They did their own version of a baby book. I have that actually. I have a couple of patterns in that and that one, there's just tons and tons of patterns. So if nobody else chimes in here, I would say check that one out 'cause there's lots and lots of different options, different... I think it's arranged by yarn weights even maybe or something. I just remember thinking that that was a really good one. There's just a lot of options in there for baby stuff. Awesome. And we do already have some crowdsourcing going on from earlier comments. So compression gloves are getting a shout out from a couple of our viewers for hand issues and things like that. So the comments section is always a good spot to check out. We'll move to Kathleen's question here next. Kathleen says, "Brenda, I started my granddaughter off with chains and she wants to get right into the pattern, but didn't like chaining. So what would you recommend to get her past it so that she can keep up her love for crochet and continue on?" My kids are at the same point too. Yeah, they just wanna be able to make something. And that's a frustrating point to be at, I think, because you see other people making things and you wanna make it too, but you really do have to learn the fundamentals in order to get there. But being a nice, awesome grandma, teaching your grandkids how to crochet, maybe you could just do the chain for them and then they can get going on whatever they need to do. And after they've crocheted for awhile back and forth and gotten more used to the stitching and how to hold the hook and they're more excited about it, then you can revisit the chaining again, just to see if that would help. Now, what do you think about something like getting a group together to kind of work at the same time? So maybe a few of them together, crocheting corners groups. Where would you send to people if maybe the social aspect might get somebody past a block like that? Yeah, I think that that would be a really good way to do it because especially with kids, if they're seeing other people doing the same things, they might leap in with that. I know a lot of people would go to their local yarn stores and meet other people there. I don't know if there's really that much stuff going on at the local yarn stores now. You'd have to check into that, with the whole COVID thing, but there's lots of online forums that if you're there with the kid that you could join in and see what other people are doing, or, I don't know, if you just word of mouth and ask some other people, if they know other people, particularly in their age group that are interested in learning. Maybe the grandma could teach more kids all at once too and make your own little yarn group. I feel like the younger generations are very good at the social media, the online aspect of a lot of things. So maybe you can get a couple of friends involved so they could have a little online meeting and you could do a bunch of stuff with that as well. So hopefully, some ideas for you getting them through that little block right there. We are about halfway into our time, so just a reminder, if you weren't with us from the beginning, I wanna draw your attention to the chat box. That's where we're getting all of our questions for Brenda here. We're talking all things crochet. You can keep it as general as you would like or something very specific for technique questions and we'll get to as many as possible. There are also a couple of links in there for you to click on. Brenda did a tree skirt live tutorial. The link to that pattern and also the tutorial itself, you can find that in the chat box. And then also next week, Brenda's going to be coming back with a different live tutorial for our Craftsgiving mini-series. So that's going to be five days of projects, but Brenda will be with us on Friday next week at 2:00 p.m central for her live project. And all of that information, you can find in a link in the chat box as well. So with that said, that's my halfway break, I'm gonna dig back into the questions and get to as many as possible in the time we have. And Kathleen's got our next one. So Kathleen says that, "I love Russian knot. It's fabulous if there's a sudden break in the yarn." So do you wanna talk a little bit about that Russian knot? I've actually never done a Russia knot before. I read about it and I meant to try it and I never did. So I can't really give you very much information on that, but you know what? Now I'm gonna go home and I'm gonna study that again tonight. I can't remember if that's where you... You can pipe into the comments, is that where you're working with wool or another felting yarn and you can rub them together and make them stick to each other when you're adding another one? I can't remember. I know that I learned about this a few years ago and I never actually used it, so I forgot about it. But this is another crowdsourcing moment. And if you're watching this and you've never checked it out, we should all Google this later and see the Russian knot. All right, well, then let's move on to our next question while more comments are dropping in on that. And this is one of our viewers on YouTube wants to know, what is the best way to learn how to read crochet charts? If you've never really... If when you look at it, it looks completely foreign to you, and it doesn't make any sense, you can check out the 14 day learn to crochet series where I teach you how to read a chart. I will show you examples and explain what all that's... How those symbols mean and things. But basically, the gist of it is that you're looking at kind of a roadmap of where all your stitches are placed, how they stack up, how they relate to the stitches that you did in the row before. And there should be a legend or a key or something at the bottom of, or side, somewhere on the chart, showing you what the symbols mean. So when you look at it, the bottom of the chart, that's usually, unless it's noted differently, usually that's where you start reading. So you'll be reading the chart in the direction that you crochet. You'll be reading it from a right to left if you're a, right-hander, and actually left handed chart reading, it can be a little bit tricky to address that because different designers might intend a different thing. But what I tell people who are left-handed, when you're working from my chart, make a mirror image of it, and then you can also read yours from the direction that you're working. And that would make the most sense. But if you're doing something like letters or some kind of... Something that can't be reversed, then that's a whole nother thing. But so you usually start from reading at the bottom and you work the symbols as they come up. And then on the next row, if you're working back and forth in rows, you'll work in the opposite direction. If you're working in the round, you're gonna continue in the same direction. So if you're working in the round, you will always work from right to left, right to left, right to left as you read the chart. But if you are working in rows, you'll go right to left, then left to right. This will be the opposite if you're a lefty and you've reversed the chart, of course. But basically, it just shows you where your stitches are and how they relate to each other. And I really like them because you can just get the overview of where you're going in the pattern. When you read a pattern with all the little... A single crochet this many times have to have a crochet here, make a postage down to that stitch, it can be really hard to visualize how they all relate to each other. But the thing about charts is it's showing you a picture. You can see just by looking at it, okay, this stitch is actually connected down here to this stitch. So I'm post stitching, I'm making a post stitch around the stitch that's like two rows below. So they are super awesome tool. All right. Well, best of luck. I do wanna point out, we've got another link for you. So Brenda has already mentioned a few times that 14 day learn to crochet series. So if you're looking into the chart reading or any of the other beginner level stitches that Brenda has commented on, that link is now in the chat box as well for you. So please check that out if you are new to crochet, we would love for you to get rolling with something like that, so that you can do more of these projects with us as Brenda brings us through them. Let's talk to Rachel next. Rachel wants to know if there is a way to tie two yarns together, so you don't have tails that you have to worry about hiding. What do you think? I see, like at the end of your project. All right. Normally, those ends will kind of work their way around and you'll end up seeing them. However, there are certain kinds of projects where you can do that. Like if you're making amigurumi or a toy and you are gonna stuff it and seal it shut, and you will never see the inside of that, yeah, you can totally tie those together in a knot. And that is fine and it'll stay there. You can also do that if you are like if tying on a new... If you're making a scarf from side to side, your tails could become the fringe of the scarf, so then you wouldn't have to weave them in there. If you're making a garment or something, I mean, I guess it depends. To me, if I had these little tails on the inside of my sweater, they would kind of start to drive me crazy. But you know what? It just is all about how much you wanna do. It's your project. You can do it the way you want. You can tie it if you want to and just let it hang on the inside, but you just have to be careful that you're not gonna be getting your finger snagged in it, or those ends aren't gonna work their way poking back out of the sweater or something 'cause that probably wouldn't look so good if you just had a random end sticking out. Now, to add onto that, if you have ends sticking out or troublesome pieces, I guess, what does the care of that look like? If you wash it, is it going to make it worse? Should you avoid washing it? What do you think about taking care of a project long-term? Sometimes washing it can make it worse. So if you have something, especially if something is somehow starting to unravel first, you really need to fix that before you wash it. Yeah, you can just take a little yarn needle and weave in your ends. And if you weave it into a couple of different directions, like a little this way, a little that way, a little this way, then it might stay in there a little better. Another thing I wanted to say, which I should have thought of before, if you really, really hate weaving in your yarn ends, you really can crochet over them often. Most of the time you can crochet over your yarn end. So say you're crocheting along in your piece and you have to add a new ball of yarn and you have two yarn tails, one from the end of your previous ball, and one from the beginning. So as you're crocheting along, you can take those two tails and just sort of tuck them right behind where you're working and hold them up kind of... It's basically like, if this is the top of your crochet work, you just hold them right behind that at the same level. And then when you crochet through underneath, grab the yarn on top, then you can keep stitching along, burying your tail as you go. If you're doing that with super thick yarns, and it's starting to show when you're doing two yarns at once like that, if you're trying to bury two tails at one time, then I would recommend burying just one of the tails as you go on that row. And then when you go across the next row, you can bury the second tail. You can pull it up a little. You'll have a little space, depending on how big your stitches are, you might have a little bit of space where your yarn is traveling to get to the next place where you bury it. But if that's on the inside and you're not worried about snagging it and you really hate weaving in your ends, which I understand, then you could try that. Diana's comment came in right as you started covering this subject here. So we're gonna stay on it for just a little for Diana. She wants to know how you could weave in ends to make sure they don't poke out after a few washes because Diana makes the triple pass, but that even is not holding up on her kids' wearables. So aside from what you just took us through, do you have any other suggestions for Diana? Okay, I have heard about people using the teeniest, tiniest dab of super glue. That kind of makes me nervous and I don't know if I... You might wanna just test it out, but if you're desperate for keeping your yarn tails from popping out and it just keeps happening and you're using a yarn that is non-feltable, you could try that. If you're using a yarn that's feltable like a wool yarn or a packer, something that you can not machine wash, and you're just washing it by hand, or you're not really supposed to machine wash. Even if you're using an acrylic, you might be able to get this to work. If you get a little tiny felting pen, so that's just like, it's a pen-shaped tool and has all these barbed wires on it. If you use that to... You just kind of stab through your piece a few times, right in the same spot where the end of your yarn tail is, then it kind of makes all the fibers sort of mishmash together and get... I mean, it felts it in that little spot. That might be enough to keep it from unraveling. I would try that. I've definitely done that. I made a sweater that was steeked once, so that's when you're crocheting or knitting, usually it's much more common in knitting, and you actually cut right through your stitches, you cut through your work. And so you have to keep those stitches from unraveling. And it was a wool sweater, so I just used a felting pen and I just felt it right along that edge where I was cutting on both sides of it I felted it and it was great, like it just stayed. I've washed it. It hasn't unraveled at all, so I recommend those. All right, well, thank you. Good luck, Diana. I hope that helps. And your kids' clothings can survive some washings in the future. Let's talk a little bit about where we can find you, Brenda. So one of our viewers on YouTube wants to know if your classes on Craftsy, specifically, a class for learning on how to read patterns. Do you wanna talk a little bit about that? So the class on how to read patterns, so that I think I was mentioning that before. I go through that a little on the 14 day learn to crochet on the Creative Crochet Corner. So that's 14 different videos on teaching all the basics that you need to know. And there is a section in there where I'm teaching you how to understand what a pattern means and all the different sections of the pattern. On Craftsy, I teach mittens and fingerless gloves class, and that I do go through and explain the pattern a little bit and I go through, you'll need this, this is what the gauge is, this is... I do that step-by-step, but it isn't specifically about just reading patterns and being oriented and learning how to read like your first patterns, if you don't know how to do that yet. So I would recommend looking at the 14 day series first instead and that's free and you can just check it out before going to the Craftsy class. And that Craftsy class link is also in our chat box as well. So if you're beyond those 14 days and you wanna jump into the fingerless gloves, that link is there for you. But the 14 day link is also in our chat box as well. Now we're gonna go to Deb's question next. And Deb wants to know, what is the best way to complete a slip stitch and not make it too tight? So as you're working along, I'm assuming you mean a slip stitch as just as your slip stitching. Actually, I'm working on a project that has slipped stitches in it right now. So when you're working on these, your slip stitches, you'll insert your hook, yarn over, pull it up, and watch the yarn that is already on your hook, not the one that you just put on your hook, but watch that yarn loop when you pull it through. If you're pulling it through, there's a way that you can do it where you don't make that loop any smaller, where you pull it through and kind of pull up. It's something that you'll just have to like... As you're working on your slip stitches, just take a minute and look at your loops on your hook and see what they're doing when you're pulling it through and why it's getting so tight. It's almost always that loop that's already on your hook, when you yarn over, pull it through, and then you pull through here, if you watch this loop right here as I'm pulling, it gets really tight and small. So you have to avoid pulling too hard in this direction. In fact, you have to just sort of get it just past that loop and stop right there. Like you don't wanna keep pulling in that direction. You wanna just insert your hook, yarn over, oops, yarn over, pull it through and you might even try sort of swinging your hook up. I'm doing this very exaggerated. You won't need to do that, but just to see what that does and pop it through that stitch. You wanna make sure you're leaving that stitch long 'cause that is kind of the main culprit when your slip stitches get too tight. I like to do... For a while there, I was doing a lot of slip stitch projects and 'cause I had eventually figured out, after a big section of it getting tighter and tighter and tighter and tighter, I changed how I held things when I'm doing my slip stitch and where I'm pulling from and kind of how... I almost pull up just a little bit as I go through each stitch to just keep that loop elongated. And once I figured that out, my mind exploded with all the possibilities 'cause when you do slip stitch in the back loop, back and forth and back and forth, you make this incredibly amazing stretchy ribbing that just springs back into shape. It's like more elastic than even knitting stitches are, like if you're doing a ribbing and knitting, it just... I loved it so much because it was perfect for around the cuffs of mittens and things like that. So I started doing a lot of that and I was all excited about it, but then I had a lot of comments from people who were making those patterns saying, "I can't do this. My stitches are too tight. It's hurting my hands." And it's super hard to just explain on paper in those patterns, like how to do that. But you need to just look at your stitch and see what's happening and just examine it and figure out a way to pull your loop through the loop that's already on the hook without making that original loop smaller. All right. Best of luck with your slip stitching. We're going to go to Joe's question next. So Joe is putting a border onto a blanket and is having problems trying to put stitches in the correct spaces on the lengthy edges. So the top and the bottom are easy. Do you have any helpful hints for Joe? Can you say that part again about... Joe is having trouble putting the stitches along the length of the blanket? Is that right? The long sides. Problems trying to put them into the correct spaces. Along the sides, like for the long sides? Are they going around the blanket maybe? Joe, if you wanna drop in anything more specific about this while Brenda starts to think through, I'll keep an eye on any of the comments that you would add in to elaborate on this. But it seems to me like Joe was talking about the top and the bottom, so the wide sides are doing okay, but the long down, the long sides of the blanket, having some trouble with that. Okay. So I'm guessing either they mean that the edge... So when they work back and forth and back and forth, the sides that are on the turning edges are not working out very well and you're not getting... There's stitches placed in the correct spot. So if that is what is happening, I definitely recommend putting a stitch marker in the first stitch and a stitch marker in the last stitch of every single row, until you are able to recognize what those stitches are, the first and last stitches 'cause that is a super, super common problem when people are crocheting, it's really hard to recognize the first and last stitches, especially in certain stitch patterns that you do. It's like really difficult. So that is something that a lot of people have trouble with and then the sides get wavy. Sometimes they go out, sometimes they go in, sometimes they go up in a parallelogram. All kinds of funky things can happen if you're adding stitches or missing stitches at the ends. So if that's what they mean, I think that'll answer that question. But also, if you were meaning that you are working back and forth and everything is fine, but then when you are trying to work along the sides of the blanket, so maybe you're doing a border around the blanket or - Joe has actually just dropped back in, and yes, this is a border that's going all around the blanket and the trouble is on the long sides. Okay. Got it. That makes sense to me. So you go back and forth and everything's fine 'cause you already have a stitch. Every time you put a stitch, you put it into a stitch from the previous row, right? Until you get to that corner and then you have to work into the side edges of your stitches. And so there isn't a specific spot there for you to insert your hook. So when you're doing that, I would recommend... I don't know if the pattern is telling you to just maybe single crochet along that edge and they don't give you any information or if they are telling you a specific amount of stitches to work, but I'll address both those things. So if they don't tell you how many stitches to put along that edge, what I would do is fold your blanket. Here. Let's imagine this is your blanket. Okay, so you've worked across here up to the top and then you can fold your blanket at like a corner like this. So you're making this kind of corner shape. Then you can count how many stitches are right here that you've already worked in the amount of space that you have for this edge right here. So then you'll know how many stitches, if you're gonna be working into these row ends, you would know how many stitches to place here. So that's the way to find out how many stitches to put, so you don't end up with too many, that makes it all roughly. If you don't have enough, it constricts it and it doesn't look very good. So if you have the proper amount of stitches, and maybe your pattern already tells you how many stitches, and then that's fine, we'll go with that. If they say, for example, this is gonna be wrong, but this is a tiny blanket here. Say you do 20 stitches across this edge of your border, right? To get them in the right spot, you can divide, fold your blanket, put a stitch marker in like in your halfway section and then fold your blanket again here, put another stitch marker in like that, do the same thing over here. Divided into manageable amounts, right? So if you were doing 20 stitches across here, then you could do 20 divided by four. So one, two, let's say there was a stitch marker there, three, four. 20 divided by four is five, so then you would do five stitches here, five stitches here, five stitches here, and five stitches here. So that makes it a lot more manageable and you know how many stitches to fit. As far as getting your stitch to go in exactly the right place, instead of looking for bigger holes, which is kind of... I don't know, I feel like that is what most people do when they first start working into the edges. You think, oh, there's kind of a big gap here. I'll fill it in with a stitch and then it'll look good. But then when you do that, it stretches that stitch out even more and you have a bigger gap weirdly. So look for places along that edge where there's like a little tighter area where you have to push your hook through. It doesn't have to be super hard. I'm not saying you have to make this really difficult on yourself, but just try it out for a few stitches, putting your hook in places where there isn't a big gap and make your stitches there. So that way it'll look a little more uniform. You won't be stretching it out, you won't see all those little holes when you start to put your stitches along the edge there. Okay, we are starting to see the finish line of today's Q&A. So if you are holding on to a question for Brenda and you haven't dropped it into the chat box yet, now is the time to do so, so we can get to as many as we can before we have to say farewell after our first live Q&A. But we do have a few to get to already in the chat box. And we're going to go into a viewer from YouTube. Wanting to look for Brenda, any suggestions that you have for beginner crochet projects, what would you recommend for somebody just starting out to dig into? If you're just starting out, you've never crocheted anything ever before, I would definitely recommend working on a dishcloth, just maybe a series of dishcloths. Do like a single crochet, half double crochet one. I feel like that's the perfect way to start because if you use a nice kind of cotton yarn, I mean, you can use whatever yarn you have, that's fine. You don't have to go out and buy anything special. But if you are already going to buy something, if you buy a cotton yarn, you can really see your stitches very clearly. Or if you're using acrylic, like that's fine. As long as you're using a yarn that's not really fuzzy or super textured or anything like that. But then when you make your dishcloth, you can see how your edges are supposed to be. You're making a square, right? Usually. And you can practice making your edges nice and clean and you can also practice going around, like what we were just talking about, placing your stitches in those edges where you've turned your work. You can practice that. And the great thing about dishcloths is they don't have to fit anyone and they don't have to be perfect and they will still be useful. I mean, you could make the dishcloth and then you can use it. It doesn't matter if it ended up being a really wonky shape 'cause let's be honest, I mean, my first crocheted things looked real crazy. So that's okay, that's normal. That's learning. You have to make some ugly things before you make some awesome things, I think. Absolutely. That's a really great suggestion. So hopefully, digging into some dishcloths pretty soon here for our viewer out there that asked that question. We're going to Sharon's question next. So Sharon wants to know how many single crochets would you put in a double crochet long side. One? Two? Would you mix them up? What do you think, Brenda? So if you're working single crochets along the side, I'm assuming that's what you mean, you're going back and forth in a bunch of double crochets and then you're working your way down along the side of the double crochet rows that you did. You're using single crochet. You're gonna need more than one because a single crochet is shorter. Like the width... Sorry. You're gonna be looking at the width of the single crochet compared to the height of the double crochet. So the double crochet is gonna be taller than the single crochet is wide. But I don't know if you saw earlier, when I was talking about trying to figure out how many stitches you need to add along the side, you can do that same trick here. So if you have your piece and you've already worked all the way along this edge here, you can fold it at it like a diagonal on a corner. And if this is... Let me clarify, let's say that this is the edges of your double crochet, right? This is your turning rows and you're trying to do your single crochets in there. So you can fold your piece and just count up how many stitches you had along here. And that's how many stitches you should try along here. Now, there is a little variance between the width of single crochet stitches and the width of double crochet stitches, but a lot of that depends on... It's very minute and a lot of it depends on how you crochet. So I think this would be a really good place to start to just fold that and count up your stitches and do that many stitches along the side. But if I had to guess, I would say probably two single crochets. But if it's starting to look kind of wavy, then maybe you'll do two single crochets and this double crochet, maybe you'll do that for a couple double crochets, and then the next double crochet, you would only do one. And then you'd go back and repeat like two in this double crochet, two in this double crochet, one on the next. If your edge is ending up to puckery, like it's cinching it in, then you're gonna need more single crochets per double crochet. So I guess the main thing is just look at what... Try a couple of things and see what's working for you and go with that and just know that you can vary it, you don't have to... For every single double crochet, you don't have to do a certain amount of single crochets. You can just do it in a pattern, like do two, two, one. Two, two, one, or something like that. I don't know if that's necessarily your answer, but I think this is one of those things that's just easier to just try it out and see if it's looking how you want it to look. Rachel actually dropped a little comment in saying that sometimes you have to fudge the stitches and then also suggests stitch and then lay your project down to see if you are rippling. Brenda, how many stitches would you recommend rolling with before you would put it down to check it out and see how it looks? How long should people try it? Yeah, that's a good question. I think I would give it at least like, I don't know, like 10 stitches, then look at it. If it looks okay so far, do 20 stitches. Check it again until you're sure that it's working. I don't think you could really be sure that it's the right amount until after you've worked like at least a few inches into your project, then you'll have a better idea. 'Cause it's really hard to tell at first. Okay, we are really starting to see the end of our time. So we have time for a few more questions. One I want to make sure that we get to is, if you are either thinking about gifting the crocheter in your circle something for the holiday season or you yourself have been asked, "What can I get you as a crocheter for the holiday season?" What would be some go-tos, some tools, maybe some yarn, maybe just gift cards, what do you suggest adding to holiday gift giving lists for people out there looking for gifts? Hmm. I think it depends on the crocheter. So if you know any... I would ask them some questions if you don't already know like what type of thing they like to crochet. Like if, for example, they really liked to make amigurumi, that's their favorite thing, then maybe go online and see if you can find some really super special eyes. I know there's a website that I like to look at and they have all different like painted eyes. They're like ombre eyes, glittery eyes, all kinds of cool stuff. Like you could find something like that for somebody who's really into amigurumi. If it's somebody who's into making garments, maybe find out what kind of fibers they like and get them... I would ask a little first before or investigate a little bit first before you spend a bunch of money on like... If they really wanna be able to machine wash their things that they make, and then you buy them some fancy alpaca that can not be washed in the washing machine, then it would be kind of disappointing. But yeah, I would do a little bit of investigation first, but I think that... I mean, who of us who crochet does not appreciate yarn? I mean, I love getting yarn for a present. So yeah, yarn is kind of a good go-to right there, I think. I think for things like hooks, if it's a newer crocheter and they haven't crocheted a whole lot, maybe get them a little pack of a variety of different hook types, so that they can find the kind of hook that they like. 'Cause I think that when you go to the store, you can get overwhelmed by all these different styles of hooks, you don't really know what to try, and it'd be nice if somebody just gave you a little bundle, maybe they're all the same, maybe they're all a G hook or something like that, but they're different grips, different tips. That would be a sort of a nice treat so that you get to find out what actually works for you and not having to go to the store and feel bad about buying a bunch of different kinds of hooks. Okay. I think we've got time for one more question here. So Brenda, you talked about having your work crochet personality and your creative free time crochet personality. So this question is kind of about merging those. So how do you find the time to get creative and how do you decide what it is that you're going to be creating next? And you can answer from both points of view, if you would like. Okay. How do I... Where do I find my creativity or find the time to get creative? I think being creative is just something that I don't really have to... This sounds terrible, but I don't have to try to be creative. I'm just always thinking about different ideas. I surround myself with things that inspire me and then all of a sudden, there's just a whole bunch more ideas of things that I wanna make. I have like an endless list of things that I wanna make. But finding the time to do all the things that I wanna do, I mean, there's just never enough time in the day, so I have to be really careful about prioritizing things. So I always do my crochet work part first, which is still creative and it's still fun and I still super love it. I always get those things done first and then after that, I can do this sort of experimental things that I don't think will probably ever see the light of day outside of the people I gift them to or whatever. But basically for me, the creative process just happens kind of by itself. I get inspired by nature, I get inspired by fashion magazines. People walking down the street wearing something cool and then I think, "Ooh, that'd be cool if it looked like this." Or I get inspired by just looking at yarn. I mean, going to a yarn store and just squishing all the balls of yarn. I mean, I just think, "Ooh, I wanna make some out of this. Ooh, this should be a hat or this should be a sweater with color work..." I don't know, for me it's, I guess I'm just lucky that I feel inspired by so many different things. All right. Well, this brings us to the end of our time together. Again, this was our first Creative Crocheted Corner live Q&A. So thank you to all of the people viewing. Before we say farewell, and I will send you off with a few reminders. I would love, Brenda, if you could remind us where to find you, some of the classes that you've done, where people may be able to find you online and what you have coming up next. That's how I'd like to have you finish us off today. So I'm gonna give you the floor for that. Okay, sure. So lately, I've been doing most of my work here through the Creative Crochet Corner. I've got video tutorials, the 14 day learn how to crochet. And then I've been doing these super fun live events where I teach you how to make a project live and then you can ask me questions while I work on them. And if you're looking for those, you can always watch the replay later. You can still watch them and download the patterns for those too. I'm on Ravelry. My name is Yarnville on Ravelry, and you can see my whole portfolio of all the things that I have crocheted and knitted on there. And I started a blog, which I've kind of neglected lately, but if you wanna check that out, it's craftsplosion.com. It's kind of an explosion of crafts at my house. So that's why it's called that. And where we're headed next, so as Leah already mentioned, we're gonna be doing the maize beanie coming up, the live crochet event through Craftsy. And then later in the month, I'll have another live event for a cowl, which I'm super excited about too. So please check back in for those other live events. Yes, absolutely. We would love to have you for more of these. And aside from Brenda, on Friday next week, every day next week, all five days, Monday through Friday at 2:00 p.m central time, it's going to be an entire week of our Craftsgiving mini-series. So it's a really great way to dabble in some other crafting. If you're a crocheter, but you've been curious about some other things, go ahead and jump in. They're always a fun time. Our instructors are fantastic. And like we said, we'll be finishing off the week with Brenda on Friday at 2:00 p.m. So that being said, that wraps up our first live Q&A with the Creative Crochet Corner. On behalf of Brenda and the entire team behind the scenes, My name is Leah, and until we see you next time, happy crafting.