Crochet Techniques and Ideas: Hats, Rugs, & Sweaters

Hello everybody, and welcome to the "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. My name is Leah, and I'm your moderator, and "Creative Crochet Corner" streams live once a month for about an hour to answer all of your crochet questions. Now, if you are viewing on our website, make sure to submit your questions and comments into the chat box, you can find it below the video player. And you can also participate by submitting your questions into the chat in Facebook, or YouTube. I also like, aside from questions, let us know where you're viewing from. We love to see where everybody is in our community, and also let us know, maybe the project that it is, that you're working on. We like to give some shout outs when we have time at these Q&As, as well, not just questions, so give us a hi, a shout out, and let us know what's going on with you. We would love to have a little bit of that back and forth throughout our time together today. Now we do have our crochet instructor, she's also our managing editor of the "Creative Crochet Corner," her name is Brenda K. B. Anderson, and she's joining us live from the studio today, to answer all of your questions. Brenda, hello, and welcome. As always, it's super exciting to have you here to join us. I would love you to start out today by telling us a little bit about yourself, maybe what you've been up to? Hi, Leah; hi, everybody! So nice to be here. So, about me. I learned how to crochet when I was really young, and I've been into sewing and knitting and crafting, and art, just anything crafty and artisty. I love all of it. And lately, I've been spending probably the bulk of my time working for the "Creative Crochet Corner." Working on projects, especially live events, live event tutorials. I just love making patterns. I mean, really, that's my favorite thing, is creating a new thing, and then sharing it with other people. And trying to help other people work their way through stuff if they're excited about it too. So, I really love being able to do these Q&As, because I can get instant feedback about what you guys like, what you're interested in, what kind of questions you have. I like to design things for you guys. So, if there's any of that information, you have any suggestions of things you'd like to see, or things you don't wanna see, or whatever, I'm open, I love hearing what you guys have to say. And so, and earlier today, what I've been up to today, I did a live tutorial on the Sunray Bucket Hat. There's a free pattern. And we, you can also watch the live tutorial at any time, but it's for this cute, little sun hat. Oh, that's lovely, I'm glad you mentioned that. I was gonna bring it myself, so again, Brenda, that was live earlier today. And very similar to this, Brenda is live for these tutorials, and has access to questions, as she's going through. So these are something that are super valuable, always sometime projects, and if you wanna catch the replay of today's project, you can go ahead and download your free pattern right now, the link is available in the description of today's video. Brenda, I'm gonna let you talk maybe a little bit more about your inspiration for this project, while some comments and questions start to come in. And for our audience, one of the other things that I like to kind of get a feel for, will you let us know kind of your crocheting age, so to speak, are you new to crochet? How long have you've been at it? Kind of so Brenda has an idea of where our audience is, as she's answering your questions. That's always helpful, all right, let's hear some inspiration story behind this project from today, Brenda. All right, well, this comes from a selfish place. Because I just needed a sun hat, and I started Googling sun hats, and I realized I kind of wanted a bucket hat. I just was looking at different shapes, and I'd actually never made a bucket hat before, I don't think. And so, the other thing that I really wanted to do, and all my live tutorials, I like to do something in each tutorial that's maybe a little bit different, maybe I'm using a different type of yarn, or a different type of stitch, something for people to learn about, and so, I do think about that when I'm designing these live tutorials, and I was thinking okay, I could do this bucket hat that's really simple stitches, really pretty straight-forward, but I could help with working with the raffia, which can be a little bit tricky, and also kind of give people some ideas on how to customize the pattern, if they're ending up with a gauge swatch that's just not working. Because sometimes when you are substituting yarns, it doesn't matter what hook you are using, you still sometimes just cannot seem to get the gauge exactly perfectly dead-on. So I wanted to choose something that was easy enough that if people needed to make substitutions, that they could do that without a lot of math, without a lot of figuring out. So, I kind of talked my way through that a little bit in the live this morning. But yeah, basically, I just needed a sun hat. And I just wanted a very like, just kind of a classic raffia-looking sun hat, with a brim that would stiff enough to stand out. So because this is made in the raffia fiber, it is stiff enough, there's no millinery wire, or anything in here to make this extra stiff, it just does that because of the fiber that I worked with. I was actually going to ask about that. I know that's a common hat question, is how to create a little bit of stability around the brim. So if people aren't using the raffia, maybe they wanna make that sun hat, but use a different material, what would you suggest for creating that shape, and having it hold a little better? Yeah so, you can get a brim that looks fairly similar to this. With crocheting very tightly with a cotton yarn, or a linen yarn. Something that is in elastic, but you can crochet it tightly enough, it will give you enough stability. Another thing you can do, is you can, in order to crochet it tightly enough, you can add two strands of yarn together, hold them together, it make a very stiff fabric. If you're using a small enough hook, it'll make a very stiff fabric. You can also use a little piece of millinery wire if you want to. I like to avoid doing that in my patterns, just because, I don't know. It's just an extra thing that people don't necessarily know much about purchasing, or they don't have it on hand. Also, the millinery wire, it makes it, you wouldn't be able to just fold this up and put this in your luggage, and have it pop back out and look perfect again after that. You need to kind of reshape it. So I wanted to figure out a way to skip that part. Another thing that you can do, too, is you can, where this brim is, if you were making this in a different yarn, and you just wanted the brim to be a little stiffer, you can actually, I think I can just demonstrate this. You can actually do more rounds of a slip stitch. So, let's say, let's see if I can figure out where I started. Right here. If you look between these grooves here, this stitch pattern was chosen specifically because it adds a little bit of stiffness to the fabric. But if that wasn't stiff enough, you could do a slip stitch of another piece of yarn in here. Which would probably give it a little bit of extra stability if you did this, and it kind of tight. You don't wanna do it so tight that it changes the shape of your hat. But, I'm just inserting my hook, and grabbing the yarn from behind, pulling it up, and pulling it through. So this is a way to sort of add more material to your piece, to make it a little bit stiffer. So you could just grab another piece of whatever you're using, it could be the same yarn that you've used to crochet the hat. And if the brim wasn't stiff enough after you made it, if you use this pattern, you could try doing a slip stitch in the crack to see if giving it that extra bulk in there, if it's worked really loosely, it's going to be more flexible. But, if it's worked tighter, or maybe you have two strands of yarn that you're slip stitching, that would probably make it really stiff. You could do something like that. And since this was worked in the round without joins, you could just slip stitch around, and around, and around, and around in a spiral, and end up here. And that could be kind of a fun way to get a little bit of extra color into your piece, too. If you wanted to do a stripe of a different color, or something in there, that'll be fun. Absolutely, thank you for talking us through some of those options. I'm sure we'll get some more questions about the hat. Our projects are always really popular, so keep those questions coming, but, we're gonna set the hat aside, and move to a very popular topic, yarn. So Dora is asking, "It seems very silly, "but should I pull my yarn out from the middle "of the skein, or from the side? "I always end up having a tangled mess "from my yarn ball." What do you say? Okay, that's a good question. You know, it kind of depends on the skein. For me, I always, if it's like a larger skein, so let me back up for a second. The skeins are those larger pieces of yarn, balls of yarn, it's not a ball-shape, but it's usually like an oblong shape. And if you reach in there, you can get better and better at this, feeling around with your fingers for the very center, and pull it out. You'll end up getting a blob of yarn, which I lovingly like to call the yarn barf, that comes out of your skein. And then, you can wrap that around your skein, to tidy it up a little bit. You can also, if you use it from the outside of your yarn, then you have your yarn skein rolling around all over the place. It can be problematic. You might be able to put it in something, to keep, to let it spin around, as you pull the yarn off the outside. If you put it in a plastic tub, or something like that. 'Cause the skeins I'm thinking of, a lot of people are using are sort of like a longer skein, about this size, so it wouldn't necessarily fit inside a yarn ball, which is another thing. If you have a yarn cake, or some other put up of the yarn, you can put it in a yarn ball, and pull it out, and it can spin around, and do whatever it needs to do, inside that ball. And so it can move around, so that way it can untangle itself when you're pulling it out. See? Just however, see how it spins around in there? But that way, it's allowed to move around in there. But if you're using it straight off of the skein, yeah. I usually pull it out from the inside. And then just wind it around the outside, and then, when I've used that up, then it comes out really smoothly from the inside. Because using it from the outside seems a little bit awkward to me. But, that's personal preference. I would try it different ways. And there are some issues, sometimes with pulling from the outside, or the inside of the skein. That might make your yarn tangle up more, or less, just depending on the twist in the yarn, and that sort of thing, so that might become an issue. And you might wanna try from the other end of it, too. All right, let's stay with yarn for our next question here. Tammy's got a question about wool alternatives. Looking for an alternative to wool, specifically Tammy's looking for something that would be a little bit cheaper. What do you suggest? Well normally when people substitute for wool, it's usually with acrylic. And to some people, acrylic yarn, they feel like, "Ah, acrylic! It's that really crunchy, itchy stuff." But they make acrylic so much nicer now than they used to be a long time ago. They have really improved acrylic yarns a lot. So, I would definitely just check out acrylic yarns. I mean, you can find, there's a big variety of acrylic yarns out there. So if you find one acrylic yarn, and you don't like how it feels, that doesn't mean that they're all gonna feel the same way, or behave the same way, or look the same way. So try out some different kinds of acrylics. And see what, if you like one of those. I'm assuming you are probably not looking for an animal fiber. For the most part, acrylic is usually much more inexpensive than wool, or other animal fibers. So, if you're looking for something that's a little more cost-effective, I would definitely go with the acrylic route, too. All right, thank you so much. We're gonna get a little more specific here. I'm gonna spell this one out for you, Brenda. So Sylvia is asking, "Do you know what the letter C, "the number two, the letter C means?" She sees it in her pattern, so C-2-C, what does that mean? I think it means corner-to-corner. But it could means something else. There could be another abbreviation for that. But, usually when I see C-2-C like that, usually that means corner-to-corner, which is a technique in crocheting, where you start, you're making a grid-like pattern, and you're working these blocks. One block at a time. And you're working, so if you're crocheting something like this, it's got all these little pixels kind of block shapes. And you'd start at one of the corners, and work across your corner, and then you work this way. And then you work this way. So what you're essentially doing, is you're starting at one corner, and ending at the other corner. I'm pretty sure, I think that's the most common usage of the C2C in the crochet world. But if you're not, if this has nothing to do with this kind of crochet which is like, it's usually used for blankets or scarves, but you can make anything out of it. You can make sweaters out of it, hats, whatever. But, it's most commonly blankets that I've seen. But if that's not what this is, and please pop back in and give me a little bit more context in your pattern. Maybe if you could read the sentence that you find it in, or something, I might be able to figure out what it could mean, if it's not referring to that. All right, I'll keep an eye out if there's any more specific that we wanna go back to this one for. In the meantime, we are as promised, going to go back to talk bucket hat for just a moment. Julia says that she made a bucket hat. But, it is wavy on the side of her head. And is curious about how you would go about fixing that wave? So I'm wondering if she means if it's wavy on this part? Or, if it's wavy along the brim? If it's wavy here on the side of the hat, like in this section, when you're wearing it here, if it's going in and out, that is probably a tension problem, or you've missed some stitches, or added some stitches, if it's wavy here, down along the brim, I think either than means your brim isn't stiff enough to flare out, hold it's shape, or it could be that you increased really quickly, and you have extra fabric there, maybe? So on this hat, I increased every round I did. I increased only three stitches in each round, so, it's a pretty gradual increase. The more you increase per round, the more it's gonna stand out. So if you look at this, the top of this hat, I increased six stitches per round, and it's flat. So, it's coming out straight like that. Here, we increased only an average of one stich per round. So, instead of going out, it's going down, but it is still slightly flaring out. And then down here, we increased three stitches per round. So if you end up with something that's wavy, and there's a lot of fabric here, if you can hold it out, and it goes straight out, then that means you have too many increases, probably. And that's what's making it wave back and forth. It could also just mean that your fabric is maybe a little loosely crocheted, and that it's just, you made it to stick out, but it's just sort of hanging down, so that's what's making it wave along the bottom. So if you weren't talking about the brim, if you're talking about something up here, and I didn't answer your question. Again, please just hop back in, and clarify a little bit more, so I can try and help you. All right, and again, I'll keep an eye out for any of those. Even if you wanna jump back to somebody's question that wasn't yours to start out with, we're always happy to go back and dig a little deeper on some of our questions. So, I will keep an eye out for those Brenda, but in the meantime, we're going to go to a newbie question next. Hailey is our newbie, and Hailey says, "I'm having problems getting my hook into my stitches. "When I watch videos, it seems like such a non-problem, "and the hook just glides right in, "am I doing my stitches too tight, "or is my yarn too rubbish? "Another problem that I'm having is my yarn "keeps splitting." So, what would you say to Hailey, and anybody else with these issues? That you are not alone, Hailey. This is like the most common crochet problem ever from someone who's starting a new stitch, or starting a new craft, crochet. So please don't feel bad, it's just, that's just how almost everybody starts out. I started out that way, hardly being able to get my hook into my stitches. So one thing you can try, okay, so first of all, to take care of the splitting yarn problem, that will be a little bit easier once your tension is looser, once you're able to hold it a little bit looser. However, there are certain yarns that are just more splitty than others. So if you're shopping for a yarn, and you're not sure if it's gonna be splitty or not, you can take a look at it. Just put it between your fingers, and try to un-twist it. See how I'm un-twisting? It takes a long time till I can actually see the separate plies. Now, can you see them splitting apart here? The tighter that twist is, the harder it's gonna be to split your yarn by accident. So if you go to the store and you buy a yarn, you just have to do this a very small amount, and it's already, you can see through it, you can see those separate plies really easy with just a little bit of a twist. Then, that's probably going to be splitting as you're using it, especially as a newer crocheter. But like I said before, once you deal with the tension gauge, working so hard to hold onto your piece, and then figuring where to go, it's kind of a stressful situation, and we all crochet a little too tightly at the beginning. But once you fix that, you will be able to crochet with yarns that seem splitty later. But to be able to crochet looser, that is something that is so easier said than done. Just loosen up your tension, you'll be fine. But, how do you make yourself loosen up when you are trying so hard? It's really hard, you can't be just like, relax! It's fine! So let me show you a couple of things that you can try. First of all, if you're having a hard time holding onto your hook, you could try using a rubbery hook like this one, that sticks in your hand a little bit better. Because, as we're gripping that hook, and trying to figure out how to hold it, we might be adding more tension to our piece without even realizing it. Another thing is, is your hook to yarn ratio, it makes a huge difference. So if you are having a really hard time getting your hook back into your stitches, try going up a couple of hook sizes with the same yarn, to see if that helps. It should help a little bit. Another thing you can do, when you insert your hook in there, actually, let's back up to the very beginning when you're first doing your foundation chain. When you do your foundation chain, if you are not able to make your foundation chains very loose, then you're already off to a very difficult start, because then you're gonna try on your next row to get your hook into those chains, and it's gonna be so frustrating. If this is sounding familiar, then this tip is for you. So try to, when you're making your chains through yarn over, and you pull through that loop, right? So this loop right here, see how you can make it longer, you can make it shorter. Try not to let it get too tight. When you're yarning over, don't actually pull on this, because then you're making this loop that's already on your hook really tight. Let yourself, you should be able to very easily slip that knot back and forth. And when you make your yarn over, try to make sure you are not letting this make that too tight. See you can just change how it is, how long that loop is. So make sure that loop is long enough that you can comfortably get your hook through. If you're still having trouble with this, definitely just go up a couple of hook sizes for your first foundation chain, just to give you a head start, so that'll make all your loops a little bigger to begin with, and it'll make it a little bit easier to stitch into those. So, that is something of course, that the more you do it, the more you'll be able to relax. And when you can relax, you can make those stitches much more loosely. And keep in mind, you're watching people who have done this a gazillion times. I've made so many chains and so many stitches, it is a non-issue for me, because I've done it a bazillion times. But when you're learning, you really just have to practice a long time before you kind of get, get the hold of everything. You're holding the hook a certain way, you're holding the yarn a certain way. You're holding a piece a certain way. You just have to kind of figure all that out. What works for you. So, another thing you can try, is you can work into the back bump of your chain, instead of the front. So when you're first starting, instead of trying to figure out how to get that hook through that stitch, it's kind of tight, "Oh! I can't get it through!" You can flip it over, and put your hook underneath that back bump that's on the bottom side, it's all those little horizontal dashes, and work under those. I almost always start out working this way, because it's just so much easier for me, and I definitely recommend this, especially to newer crocheters, because a lot of times we're taught to work underneath those two loops, that chain, for that first, the first row that we do. And it can be frustrating already from the very start. So after we've worked a bunch of single crochets here, or whatever stitch you're doing, when you're doing the second row, and you're putting your hook in there, say, we're doing more single crochets, we'll just insert our hook right through, yarn over, pull up a loop. And when we do this, we wanna make sure we are not making these loops really tight. If we're making them tightly, it's going to get too small. So this loop controls how tall your stitch is. I mean, at least predominately how tall your stitch is. This loop here is gonna control how wide your stitch is. So if you, for example, if we made this loop on the hook really tight right now, if that was tight, and not, it couldn't slip back and forth very easily, and then we made our next stitch, even if this was tall, this is kind of short, so it might be hard to get your hook underneath there. Really they kind of work together to make it loose enough. So just, as you're working, just take a look at what is happening to those loops on your hook, because this has everything to do with how loose, or how tight your tension is, like what these loops are doing, how much you're pulling them up like this, after you yarn through, yarn over and pull up your loop. If you just barely pull it through like that, it's gonna be tight. If you pull it through a little bit more, it'll be looser. If you have a really loose tension like this, it might be hard to get gauge unless you go down a hook size. Everybody crochets differently. And really, I know this is a very long-winded response, but everybody crochets a little bit differently. Just give yourself some time to look at how, like what the loops are doing as you are, like in slow motion, making those single crochet, or whatever stitches you're working on. And just see what they're doing, and see if you pull up a little more on those loops, if it'll loosen up a little. 'Cause that'll make it so much easier to get your hook into it on the next pass across. Amazing. And, I would like to point out, we get the opportunity to watch Brenda really demonstrate some of this. So yes, a lot of the videos, like Brenda pointed out, that you're watching are pre-recorded, and we have a lot of those on our website, as well, for access for you. But, these live Q&As, and what Brenda did earlier today, the live tutorial, that's your opportunity to say, "Hey, can you slow down a little bit, "I'd love to see that stitch again." And that can also be really helpful. We like to take advantage of Brenda when she's in the studio and have her demonstrate as much as possible, which is exactly what we're gonna do with our next question, here, Brenda. So I hope you're ready. Anita is looking for you to demonstrate the magic ring for us. Okay. So we would love to see that, and explain it as you go. Okay, so there are lots of different ways to do this. But the way that I prefer to do the magic ring, magic loop, adjustable loops, it's called a gazillion different things. So here, let me just put this all in view, so you can see. So, here's my ball of yarn. When I start out, I draw like a cursive E shape, or just a loop like this. Just starts out with a loop, just kind of around the back, and it's sitting on top right here. Then I take my loop, and I fold it over like this. Until it's sitting right on top of the strand that's connected to my ball of yarn. And then I will put my hook underneath that loop, and I put my finger right here, where these yarns cross over, where that little crossover is. I put my finger there. So, it's only underneath that middle strand, and I just pull on the beginning yarn, till like this, until it gets a little smaller. And then to start, I just always start with this little chain that kind of anchors it in place. And then you can work right into here. There's, but like I said, there's lots of different ways to do this. People have other ways of doing it. Where you are actually crocheting over this part. I prefer not to crochet over that, for myself, because I feel like it sometimes gets snagged in there, I don't know, I just had some issues on it, when I was first learning how to do adjustable loops. And then I realized, you could do it this way, too. And then when you, let me put a few more stitches in here, so you can see what it does. We'll just add a couple more. Once you get enough stitches, how ever many you start with, then you just kind of hold on, pinch your yarn here, where you're, or you're piece that you're working on, your crochet, here. And then, you can just pull on that beginning yarn tail, until you cinch it down to nothing. You're just pulling on it to tighten it all the way up. And then you can begin working around and around. For some reason, just working on that one strand was easier for me, so this is the way I like to do, and I feel like it's a very straightforward way of teaching it. But they're are, I've seen at least three other different ways of doing it, besides this. And I know that "Creative Crochet Corner" does have at least, at least one or two other ways of doing it, so that might be worth looking at too, if you wanna just check out how other people do it, learn some different ways, and see what works for you. 'Cause like anything in crochet, you have to figure out a way that works with the way you like to hold things, and what you're trying to make, and it's nice to have all the options, too. All right, thank you for that. We are going to jump into somebody's project with our next question. So Leanne is making an American flag, lap throw. So very specifically, it needs to have a very clean edge between the blue field and the flag stripes on the flag. So how would you suggest crocheting a clean color edge for that American flag project? Okay, so I'm assuming that you're working back and forth in turn rows for this project. You could decided if you want to, I don't know if you're working from a graph to get the stars in there, or if you're gonna add the stars later. But a simple way to do it, would be to make, you could make a complete separate piece of the blue. And whoops, I'm drawing my flag all backwards. What is happening to me? Okay, so I was thinking about it in my lap. So if you're working back and forth in rows for your stripes, you could go back and forth, and back and forth. And then you could decide how big you want that blue to be. Keep, remember how many stitches that was. And then just go back and forth, and back and forth, switching your colors here. Make this piece separately. And then you could sew this piece together. You could do a little border along the striped piece like along here, and along here. And then you could sew those together to make it look really neat and tidy. Another thing you could do, if you wanna just switch colors. If you're gonna go back and forth through the red and white section. And then, when you get to this, once you get to this blue section, to just do, intarsia, where you, this is gonna be a little bit tricky to explain. Oo, I should of brought another color of yarn. Where you would on your last stitch of the color before you switch to blue, say you were doing red, or vice-versa, if you, yeah, let's say you're coming back and forth, and then you were doing your very last stitch across the striped section, and you were switching to blue, do a yarn over, on your last yarn over, your yarn over with blue, because every time you make a stitch, you are creating the little hat on top of the stitch. With, for the next stitch, when you're completing that stitch. Okay, that was a little confusing, let me explain that a little bit better. So, let's see. Let's say, we're doing some half double-crochet stitches here. And then, we wanted to switch to another color, which unfortunately, I didn't bring. I should of brought a second color yarn, but I didn't. So, we'll just have to imagine that. So, if this is the last stitch before your blue stitch, this is your blue stitch here, this is a red or white stitch here, then you would work your half double crochet, or whatever stitch you're making. And then, on the very last yarn over, which would be now, you would drop this yarn, pick up your blue yarn, imagine this is your blue yarn, your other colored yarn, and then pull it through. Because see, when you pull it through, you just made this part of the stitch, which is going to be the top of the next stitch, which is the blue stitch. So, in order to make that a clean-colored change, make sure you're doing that last yarn over before the color change, with the new color, and then you can continue on. So then, you'll do the same thing. You'll work across in your blue. Make sure you do your last yarn over, before you switch to the red, or the white. Make sure you do that with the red, whatever you're gonna continue with, to keep going back and forth. So those are some ideas. I think either of those would work really well. It just kind of depends on if you wanted to do your stripes, if you just wanna make the whole thing, and change colors back and forth, which is totally fine. And when you're doing that, when you're going back and forth between the two colors, you don't need to cut the old color, you can just let it hang on the back of your work for the next row when you need it again. So you can just, you don't need to cut it every single time you switch from one color to the next color. Okay, I'm gonna jump in with a little time check here. So we some more questions to get to, but, we're a little over halfway through the time that we have allotted for these questions for Brenda. So if you're hanging onto a question, you wanna add on to something she's already talked about, any of that, start to really get those into the chat boxes for yourself. Also, a quick reminder, we mentioned it a few times, we're going to mention it again in our next question. But, Brenda this morning did a live tutorial on that bucket hat that is sitting right next to her. If you are interested in that, and you missed it, the replay is available, and the download pattern is free for you. You can find that link in the description of today's video. Make sure to get your hands on that, it's a fun summer project, and I know we still have some summer left. I know it's speeding by, but plenty of time to make and use that bucket hat. We are going to actually talk about it with our next question, here, Brenda. So if you wanna have it handy, I'm not sure, it looks like either Janie or Jane, has our next question. And they are wondering if you can make the brim on that sun hat bigger, and if so, how? Okay, yes, absolutely. So, if by bigger you mean just longer, like when you're wearing it. If you just want it to cover, you know, go a little further down at the same slope, then you can continue increasing how the pattern sets you up to increase. So, you're just increasing three stitches for every row. And you just keep going and going until you're happy with it. And then, you switch to that last, there's one round at the end that's a little bit different, where it's just single crochet, instead of half double crochets through the back bar. If you don't know what that means, then you should go back and watch the live from earlier, and I explained all that back bar business. If you mean you wanna make the brim bigger, like you want it to flare out more, if you want it to come, instead of going at this angle, if you want it to come out at a sharper angle, then what you would need to do is increasing, you would need to increase more stitches per round. So, if you wanted it to go straight out, like a saucer sticking straight out, you'd be doing six increases per round, this is three. So if you wanna do something in between straight, and what it is right now, then you could four, or five increases per round. And that would give you... The more increases you do per round, the more it's gonna tilt your brim like up like this. So that, here let me put this on here straight so it makes a little more sense. Instead of like this, the more increases you do per round, it's gonna start bringing it up to going straight out. So, if you just wanted your brim to be bigger in this direction, and come straight out more, you can just keep continuing going around, and around, and around. And you'll just be doing more increases per round, so. All right, sounds good. Thank you for covering that. Quick note from Leanne, this was about the color question that you just finished. Leanna says "You are awesome, "the changing of the colors process makes sense to me now. "So, thank you, Brenda, that was really clear and helpful." Yay! Which is great! That's what we're here for today. All right, thank you. Let's go up to a fellow Leah. Hello, Leah, I will ask your question next. When working on circles, Leah struggles with joining. So the patterns say to join at the top of the quote, "Chain three, et cetera" at stitches often so tight. Am I supposed to stitch into the one next to it? It's usually easier to work in. And also, when a pattern says a chain counts as a stitch, it's flimsy and not as defined as a double crochet stitch. So do you have any suggestions for what Leah is dealing with? Yes, I am with you, Leah. I am not a huge fan of using my turning chains as a stitch, unless it's like a lacey thing, or something like that. That's just personal preference for me. You are supposed to work into that stitch, yes. You are. When a pattern tells you to work into your turning chain, or if says your turning chain counts as a stitch, that means that you are working into that turning chain. So, let me set something up here. One problem, let's see, so if this was my turning chain, I'm gonna do double crochet, so I'm chaining three, which by the way, we're taught to chain a certain amount of stitches, depending on the height of the stitch. And that's where you should start out. But if all of your chains are ending up too long, that can also cause extra wobbly-ness along the edge. So you can try doing one fewer chain there, if your chains are kind of loose. And there's no, nobody's gonna come to your house and say, "That's the wrong number of chains!" The right number of chains for you to use as a turning chain, you can start off with whatever they are saying. You know, chain three for double chain, whatever the standard that they say in the pattern. But if it's not working for you, you can certainly change it. Because you're in charge of your project, you're the crocheter. So you can do more fewer chains if it feels like it's getting you a better height. So don't be afraid to change that. So let's say this is counting as a stitch. So I worked my chain, so that counts as a double crochet. And we're gonna do, I'll do a few more double crochets across. And, Leah, can you remind me, did she specify the, the other Leah, specify is she working in the round, or if she's working in turned rows? I think she said she's working in the round. It just says working on circles. Circles! Yeah, so she is working in the round. So even though I am doing this, actually, you know what? I'm gonna just switch to this piece right here. This will be a little bit less confusing, I think. So...we'll get our turning chain in there. Maybe I won't go all the way around, so we don't spend a bunch of time just watching Brenda double crochet for this question and answer session. But, I'll get a few in here, and then I'm going to come around, and we'll pretend that I went all the way around this whole thing. Let's just, maybe I'll fasten off, and make this a little bit. We'll just pretend that I went all the way around. Or, almost all the way around, and I'm ending. Actually, I'm going to do this. This is, so, I did a double crochet stitch right into the same stitch I did my beginning chain. Just for a little contrast. And I'll explain that more in just a second. All right. So, we're coming around our circle. And getting to that turning chain that's counting as a stitch. So what that means is, when we get to the very last stitch, let's do one more in here. When we get to that last stitch, we are going to insert our hook into the top of this turning chain. So, there were three stitches, or three chains, I should say. One, two, three. That was our turning chain. Normally, when you work into a chain, you work underneath these two stitches right here. And that can be very tight. So even though they don't necessarily specify where to put your hook, most of the time I think they mean right there. But, I have started putting my hook under just this front loop, and out. Basically, I'm using this loop, and then the back bump. That is going above my hook when I do my slip stitches. So when I insert my hook, I just kind of feel around in there, and put my hook underneath, you know, just under that first loop, but then out underneath that back bump. So, let me flip it this way. You can see there's the back part of the loop. And there's the back bump. So for me, it's way easier for me to get my hook in. You can just put your finger behind there, and sort of push it through. So you end up with two loops on top, and one loop on the bottom. And do your slip stitch that way. That for me, is so much easier than trying to get it underneath that, both, you know, those two stitches that make that V. It's like hard to find that little back bump. And make sure that's on the bottom. There's just all this blah of going on when I'm trying to stitch it, I don't like it. So I will just feel around and put my hook underneath the back bump in this back loop like that. Okay? So I'm kind of splitting, there's only one loop underneath my hook right here. That's the front part of the chain. So, that is what they mean to do, when you're crocheting all the way around. You are supposed to be working, slip stitching there, chaining, however you meant, however many you do, three. And then, you don't work into that one again. 'Cause this counts as your stitch, your first stitch of the round. Every time you make a turning chain, that's counting as your stitch. When the pattern tells you it counts. So yes, sometimes when you do that, you get this weird window here. And it's just, this isn't as wide as one of these stitches. And I don't know, sometimes it bugs me. I don't like to see the holes. I'd rather condense it with more. So what I do, is I just ignore it when it says that my turning chain counts as a stitch. And then, I always just count my first stitch. Like I do an extra double crochet into that same row, or into that same chain, into that same stitch, rather. So these two are counting as one stitch together. And then when I come around, I join to the top of that stitch, chain my three, and then work into that same stitch. So that gives a little extra. If you're working around, and around, and you're ending up with these little dots of, the holes that you can see, because your turning chain isn't really wide enough, then you can do that. Another thing, sometimes people find this helpful. Especially if you're working back and forth in turn rows, is to do a linked stitch. So what you would do is your, if you're trying to eliminate that window that's between the turning chain, and the next stitch, you could instead of, so a linked stitch. There's actually a video on this, on the "Creative Crochet Corner" if you wanna see this a little more in depth. But just to give you the general overview, if I was doing a double crochet in this stitch, and I wanted to link it to my turning chain, instead of doing a yarn over, and then inserting yarn over, pull up a loop, pull through two, pull through two, that's a regular double crochet. Instead of that, instead of doing a yarn over, I would just put my hook halfway up the turning chain, and pull up a loop right there. And then, go down here into your stitch, yarn over, pull up a loop. And that's gonna give you the same amount of loops to finish off your double crochet, like this. But what it does, is it joins your turning chain to the first stitch that you did, it connects them. Because you pulled up a loop from that chain to be part of your double crochet. So they're stuck together like that. And there's no window between them. So you could try, if you wanna keep your turning chain as a turning chain, as a stitch, like how the pattern says, and not get all confused about what counts, what doesn't count, you can just link your turning chain to the next stitch. And then when you come around, make sure you're working into the top of that turning chain. That would be the last, you know, you need to put another stitch directly on top of that. There should be a chain, a turning chain, right above this turning chain every time you go around. You don't wanna miss that, because it could be easy to miss when you join those two together, you might start thinking about it as being one stitch, but it's secretly two stitches stuck together. So, I hope that those options will help you get rid of the little gap that you don't like. I completely understand, 'cause I don't like that little gap, either. All right, well, we got a little mini tutorial right there in the middle of our Q&A. We do have about 15 minutes left with Brenda here. We got quite a few questions that we're gonna try and get through. Drop in your last-minute questions, if you'd like to get them answered today, but never fear, like I said at the top of the hour, this happens about once a month. So you will have access to ask Brenda some questions, even if your question doesn't get asked today. We're gonna move into talking stitches next. We're gonna do our best to see if you can identify this. Just by description, Brenda. So Kathleen has a blanket that her grandmother handed down. It's a beautiful crocheted blanket. And Kathleen is wondering what the stitch is. It looks like a bunch of consecutive half circles, or like rainbows, almost. And she made each large row in a different color. So Kathleen loves this, and is curious about what stitch type she might be looking at there on that blanket. Oh, I'm trying to imagine. It looks like a bunch of half circles, like next to each other? I wonder if she means like, kind of, let me, I'm running out of room, running out of room here. Let me switch. Okay, is it like this? I wonder if it's like a shell stitch, even maybe? Like, could it be like this? Like these are your stitches. Okay, if this is looking familiar, let me know. Or if you have any more descriptive words, that you could help explain. I'm not really sure. Are the half-circles very small? I'm just guessing. One of the more common stitch patterns is the shell stitch. But if this is, if maybe, you're a more advanced crocheter. And you already know what a shell stitch is, and you know it's not that. Or maybe the half-circles are much larger? It's really hard for me to know. It could be a lot of things. Is it all in one color? Yeah, Kathleen did mention that every row of those half-circles is in a different color. Okay so it's a row in one color, so it could still be a shell stitch. It's probably not some kind of, because at first I was thinking, well, maybe it's sort of like a half granny circle kind of put together thing, but I don't think it's that. I think it must be something, or Catherine Wheel. Oh! I wonder if it's a Catherine Wheel pattern? So it could, Catherine Wheel, it's usually, it could be striped, and it could be that every time you do a row, it's in a different color. So some, it looks kind of similar to this. But, it's sort of like, oh, I don't know if I can just exactly draw this off the top of my head. But Catherine Wheel kind of looks like a bunch of, like circles kind of cut in half, I'm gonna try and remember if they go like this, maybe? And fit in here. Something like that. But, I would say, if you look up Catherine Wheel's stitch pattern, it might be, if it looks something like this, it might be Catherine Wheel. So then, if it is, there's some kind of stitches going like this, and then there's some kind of stitches slightly offset going like that. Like you can tell in the Catherine Wheel, they don't come out of the same place. But they're close to each other. I don't know if that, I drew a little scribble is gonna help, but. Kathleen did say "Yes," that's what it looks like. Yes! There's a little bit puffy, and the next row is in the windows, and it's so cute. So I think Kathleen is going to look into the, both stitches. So you mentioned the Catherine Wheel could be it as well. Okay. Perfect. All right, we have played a little drawing game there, too, as well. All right, let's- I feel like I should be playing "Pictionary" here, as well. If you guess the crochet stitch. I'll draw, and you guess it. Oh my gosh, what a fun little game to play, as like a little giveaway maybe at some time. Okay, let's jump back to yarn for our next question. Arlene is looking for a suggest from you, Brenda. What kind of yarn is best for men's socks, if you're not using wool? Okay, so not using wool. I would say like an acrylic nylon blend, or possibly, there are some yarns that are, I'm trying to think, there's a yarn called "Fixation," that Cascade Yarn put out. I think they still make it. But there's an elastic thread inside, like already made into the yarn, so each piece of yarn is a little stretchy. But it's cotton with a little bit of elastic. And maybe possibly a small amount of something else. But, it's predominately cotton, but it is stretchy. And it's thin, I've made socks out of it before. And they're really comfy because with wool, you get that extra little stretch in with acrylics, and things like that, you can get a little, something similar feeling to the wool. But if you're not using, but if you don't wanna use an acrylic, if you wanted to use a natural fabric, then I feel like, I would look into some cotton yards that have some sort of elastic, or some sort of fiber in there to make it a little bit more stretchy. But there are, I know, I'm trying to think, there might be a yarn called Cobasi. I think I'm saying it right. That also has a similar make up. Like it's mostly cotton, and there's some sort of elastic thread in there, I've used that before. And that feels really nice. So that would be really nice for a pair of socks. But you know, when you're looking for making socks, I like to use a sock yarn that has a little bit of nylon in it, or something, yeah just to, a little bit of nylon really helps it stay a little bit more sturdy. And when you're wearing them, rubbing your foot in your boots, or your shoes, or whatever, it's not gonna wear out as quickly, if you have just that little bit, just a small amount, of a nylon in your yarn. So, I would look for that, too. All right, thank you. Good luck with those suggestions, Arlene. We're gonna move to Sonja next. Sonja's also looking for a suggestion here. Sonja wants to make a sweater. One problem, no idea where to start. So, what would you suggest for Sonja, and anybody else that's stuck at the beginning? Well, I actually have on my radar that might be a future project for me. So maybe you can start with me, but you probably don't wanna wait quite that long for me to get the sweater made. But, I would look for something in a sweater. I mean, it really depends a lot on what your crochet skills are thus far. If you like working in the round, or if you like working back and forth in rows. So if you have no idea what any of that even is, then I would say, if you're gonna start with a sweater, find something that doesn't have a lot of pieces. Like if you search, if you've ever searched online, you could, well, if you've ever used Raverly, a website, Raverly. You can very easily look up different types of sweaters, whether it's seamed or not seamed, you can check all these boxes, and it will find patterns for you. This is just Raverly, it's just a knitting and crocheting website. It's basically a big data base of patterns for knitters and crocheters. You can look up; well, it's like a database of yarn, and projects, and all kinds of different, really, different helpful things when you're looking for a specific project. If you don't use Ravelry, and you just wanna search online for a sweater, I would say look for something that is in one color, it's very, maybe kind of a boxy shaped sweater. If it's something that's very close-fitting, it might have a lot of increases or decreases, or a sleeve cap, or something like that. Those things might be harder to figure out for your very first sweater. But probably the most important thing is just to look for reviews on the pattern, to see if other people had an okay time making the sweater. If all the information is there. You wanna make sure it has how much yardage you need, what gauge, you need to crochet it to. Different sizes, whatever size you're looking for. It should have all these components in the pattern to tell you. Yeah, I guess I would just start there, and look for something that doesn't have a lot of shaping. Maybe it's not a cardigan, maybe it's just a front, a back, and two sleeves, and as little shaping as you can, just to get the kind of hang of sewing pieces together, or making something that fits your body, too. So, keep it simple. All right, keep it simple is always a good starting point, I think. Let's see what else we can get through today. Ellie is next. Ellie wants to crochet a rug, but I'm not sure if I need any specific yarn, or hook size, or anything like that. And how should I make it stick to the floor? Is this even a thing? What do you have to say for Ellie, here? Well, you can buy those, sort of a little like rubbery, I don't know what they're called. It's like a little rubbery mesh thing that you can put under any rug. You can just buy them at Target, even. They're basically meant to keep your rugs from slipping. And you can cut those, 'cause they're, I don't know what they're made of on the inside, but the outside is coated in some kind of sticky rubbery material. So you can cut it to whatever shape you need it to be. So, when I've crocheted rugs in the past, I've put that underneath them. And I just make it out of yarn. I made one rug out of a bulky weight acrylic yarn. Oh, one thing you wanna think about, though. Is, first of all your rug could be very large, I don't know. Or maybe you're just making a tiny rug for in your bathroom, or something like that. But, think about the scale of this project, and how much yarn it's really gonna take. So, you might wanna find something that isn't super-expensive, first of all. Second of all, something that's gonna hold up to being walked on over, and over, and over. Mean, normally you don't walk on your sweaters, you're gonna be walking on a rug. So, you really wanna find something that's very sturdy. So either an acrylic yarn, or a cotton yarn, would be another good option. You could do a wool yarn, too. That would be fine. But you just don't wanna find, you don't wanna start with a very fancy yarn, and be walking on it. It has to be something that's very sturdy. You can make a swatch and tape it to your floor, like entry-way, with little painter's tape, or something that doesn't wreck your floor, and then walk over it for awhile, just to see what it does. Just so there aren't any surprises after you make a big gigantic rug out of it. But yeah, you can make it out of all kinds of stuff. I'm actually working on a project, where I'm making a rug out of T-shirts. So I cut up my T-shirts into strips, and then, I'm crocheting those, because it's giving me a really nice heavy-weight yarn. And I had a whole bunch of T-shirts already, and I just wanted to see if I could do this. So, people used to make rugs all the time out of old scraps of fabrics, or old clothes, and that sort of thing. And those scraps of fabrics are sturdy, and they can hold up to walking all over 'em, over and over, so that's another option, too, if you're interested in making your own yarn. It can be kind of fun. It is a little more time-consuming. But, yeah, good luck with your yarn. And your rug. All righty. That brings us to our very last question today. Again, join us the next time, we'll have more questions for you, Brenda. Brenda will have more answers, and I'm sure more demonstrations for all of our viewers. But, we're gonna close off today's questions with Nicki's question. And Nicki says that, "I've made a bunch of fun "granny squares, slash, circles." And is looking for a stitch recommendation to join them together, while also filling in the difference around the curves. So what would you suggest for Nicki? Filling in the difference? Oh, okay. So like, I'm guessing you mean, here's your circles. Like this, and you're putting them together? And you want something that goes in here? Probably? So you can do something where you, if you want it to be all very solid, you could just be single crocheting around. And then, you could do taller stitches here. Like this. Let me draw this a little bigger. So you guys can actually see what I'm doing. Okay, so let's say, you're putting your circles together. Did she say granny squares and granny circles? Granny squares, slash, circles. Okay, well maybe all. I wonder if it's all on the same blanket? Well, if you're looking for something, when you have this sort of negative space here, in between, you can be just like stitching along, here's some sub, single crochet stitches. And then you can make a little taller stitch, and then you can make maybe a couple in the corner, like that. So you're kind of making actually a corner shape. And then, maybe back down to half-doubles, singles, or even slip-stitches when they're close together. You can just put them next to each other, and see what you would need to fill in. Then when you come around to the other side, you can do the same thing. I drew this kind of in the way, it really should only come to half way, a half way point. But you can do the same thing to fill in this section. So basically what you wanna do is find stitches that fill in this little negative space, or whatever negative space you have. You can just make taller stitches to fill that in. If you wanted it to be kind of, if you wanted it to be able to see through that, and you don't want a super solid thing, you could do a combination of stitches, taller stitches, and then chains in between the stitches. You could also do something like, you could be crocheting single, when you're crocheting two things together, if you're looking for a stitch where you can crochet them together, you can work through just the top. Like, as they're sitting on the table, just the top loops. Like this. You can also just work under this one, and then, if you had another piece over here, like that. You could be doing slip stitches, or single crochet stitches, or whatever you like. So you could think about whether you wanna do a border first, and then stitch those borders together. So if you did a border first, you could fill in those spaces. If you're not so much interested in filling that in first, and you just wanna stitch them together, you'd have to do some sort of like, I don't know, some sort of slip stitching, and then switch to a taller stitch. And then later, it gets a little bit more complicated to just explain this with my scratch paper. But basically, if you're having trouble filling this section in, your choices are to either do a border around it, make some taller stitches, and then stitch them together, or, you could make a little piece, a little, tiny little triangle, or something like that to fill that in first. And then, you could just slip stitch everything together, or single crochet them together. There's lots of ways of seaming things together, too, that look really nice. Like an invisible mattress stitch, you could butt those pieces right up. And you can't even see a seam, or anything connecting them. I actually, there on the "Creative Crochet Corner", I did a video tutorial on five different ways of seaming things together, if you wanna check that out. And I go through a bunch of different ways of seaming. So that is mostly sewing, but some of it is actually crochets seaming, sewing it while you're crocheting. If you wanna check that out. But yeah, you can use really any stitch. But if you want them to be butted up close to each other, you're gonna wanna use a shorter stitch. Let me show you. You can do like, let's say we were single crocheting, or slip stitching, where we just insert through both pieces. I'm just going through that top loop, and then, pull through, pull through. Insert under that top loop, insert here under the top loop, yarn over, pull through, pull through. You can use this stitch, this works really nicely. Or, you could use a yarn over slip stitch, which is, you yarn over first, and then you insert under both top loops, yarn over, pull through, and pull through, too. And that makes kind of, a little bit more of a decorative, actually, let me put two straight pieces together, so you can see this a little bit better. If you do that, then it ends up having a really nice stitch on the top edge. So, we'll do a yarn over, insert under just those top loops of each piece, yarn over. Pulling it through, and then pulling through those two, whoops, I lost my yarn. And then, I'm pulling through the two loops that were already on my hook. Here, let me try that one again. All right, insert, yarn over. Whoops, yarn over, insert. Pull up a loop, and pull through those two. Yarn over, insert under the top loops, yarn over, pull up. And pull through two. I'll try to do that a couple more times, and then, I'll show you what that looks like. This is one of my favorite ways, actually. Seaming granny squares together. Because of that extra yarn over, you end up with this sort of little V on top, and it makes kind of a nice decorative edge, instead of the V being just over on this side, and then you have, it looks asymmetrical, if you just do a slip stitch, but you can definitely do a slip stitch. Many people do that, many people do a single crochet to attach them, there's just lots of different versions. But yeah, I think if you looked at that, if you wanted to watch my video on my different seaming techniques, you might find something in there, too. I show you some different ways of putting those pieces together, some where you don't even see your stitching at all. So I think that would be worth checking out, too. All right, well, that was our final question of the day. Before I send everybody off, with a few reminders of what to look out for in the future. Brenda, do you have any final thoughts you wanna share? What to look out for in the future? You're gonna talk about what to look out for in the future? Yup. Mm-hm. I thought I was gonna talk about what to look out for in the future. Yeah, I just wanted to say that a lot of times when we're having these Q&As, there is probably a lot of people watching them, who have questions, and they're maybe hesitating to ask them, because they don't wanna feel stupid, or they don't, they think it's a dumb question. Or, they feel like they should know something. But, this is just how I feel about everything in life, really. If you have the question, it's not a dumb question. It's really okay to ask. Don't be sitting on a question. If you wanna know something, just ask me, I'm happy to, I'm very happy to answer these questions. I love trouble-shooting with people. I love questions that seem like they're out of nowhere. But I also love answering questions from the beginner crocheters that just feel like they're floundering, or they don't know where to start. Or, they're might, I just wanna encourage you, if you're one of the people who've been watching these, and you're like, "Oh, I kind of wanna know about this, "but I don't know if I'm gonna ask that." I just wanna encourage you to just ask me. That's a great thing to end on. Keep those questions coming. If something strikes you in the meantime, come back for our next Q&A. Brenda will be happy to answer those questions for you. But, let's get a little more specific. So first, a reminder, you can see that bucket hat sitting next to Brenda. The demonstration of that happened this morning. So, you can go ahead and find the replay, as well as download the free pattern. The link to that is in the description. And I did notice that our fantastic behind-the-scenes team dropped that into the chat box, as well. So, find the link to that, there. And of course, Brenda will be hosting another "Creative Crochet Corner." It's a live project tutorial. It will be coming up on Wednesday, August 10th. It will start at 11:30 a.m., Central Time. So mark that on your calendars. Again, Wednesday, August 10th, 11:30 a.m. Central. Brenda's going to be demonstrating how to make the Etta's Cowl. And the free pattern is going to be available for you to download. I'm sure our team is loving making me say Etta's Cowl. So, that is, you can see the photo on the screen. It's a beautiful project. It will be very fun to make. And of course, Brenda will be demonstrating it live, so you will be able to ask her questions about the project, while she's taking you through the different steps. So you can be sure to get as many tips out of it, as possible. So, thank you again to Brenda, for sharing all of your time and expertise with us today. Thank you to all of you out there viewing, for your questions, and just your general excitement about crochet. We can't wait to see you the next time. Until then, happy crocheting. Bye.