Hi guys it's Sarah Jayne from Bella Coco and this is your place for lifestyle
inspiration and craft tutorials make sure you click the subscribe button to
keep up to date with any of my latest videos if you haven't already so today
what I'm going to be doing with you is going through some hints and tips for
your tension because a lot of people do struggle with this especially when
they're first starting out with crochet so I really hope you find this useful
and let's get started so tip number one is all about your yarn now when you buy
yarn it either comes in a ball like this or it might come and slightly
differently to this but basically you can choose to either unravel it from the
outside or you can choose to unravel it from the inside so usually if you feel
and down each side you'll find the actual middle of the of the ball and you
can actually pull it out from the inside now some people like this because they
feel that it comes out easier and that you know the ball doesn't move
around as you're working with it I personally take it from the outside but
what I quite like to do is actually turn my balls of yarn into yarn cakes now I
do have a separate tutorial for this so I shall leave a link just here and
you'll be able to go and see that and I'll also leave it in the description
box below but the basic principle of these is that the yarn actually unravels
a lot easier so it's not bouncing around as you're using it tip number two is to
actually make sure that you've taken up enough of the yarn as you're working so
if you're working and the the yarn is pulling on the ball in order to actually
get some more off as you're working that's going to make your work a lot
tighter so periodically stop unravel some more yarn and then carry on with
your work you don't want it to be pulling on this ball at all
so tip number three is to actually get yourself something like this this is a
yarn holder and basically what you want to do is take your yarn and pop it in
and then you're going to find the very end of your yarn like this and then when
the yarns inside the pot you're going to poke it through and just here and that
as I say stops the ball of yarn from rolling around the floor as you're
working and especially if you've got a yarn cake inside there it will help to
just pull the yarn out nice and gently tip number four is all about how you
hold your yarn now this is going to be different for everybody the way that I
hold my yarn might be different to the way that you
hold your yarn it also might depend on how you actually hold your hook as well
now you have two ways of holding your hook or two and main ways of holding
your hook and that would be the knife hold so as if you're holding a knife
like this and then you also have the pencil hold like this so depending on
how you actually work might depend on how you hold your yarn now typically
what you want to do is create that tension with your fingers so that you
are you know not having your yarn too loose and it's flowing to free it
through your fingers like this but also not wrapping it too much around your
fingers so you're actually tugging on the yarn now the way that I like to do
this is to wrap around my finger and then also put it over the top of my
finger just here this way I create and your little tension hold just here so as
you're working this is the bit that you're actually pulling on here to
do your stitches so some people like to just weave it in and out of their
fingers like this like I say I like to wrap my round my little finger and then
hold up like this now you can do this whichever way you
prefer as you start to crochet that little bit more you will find your own
way of doing things you might also find that you alter it slightly depending
on what thickness of yarn you work with I know that when I work with t-shirt
yarn I don't actually wrap it around my little finger
I just actually pop it over the top of my little finger instead just because
the the yarn is so thick so don't try and copy what other people do find a way
that works for you by all means give other peoples variations a go but
whatever feels most comfortable for you is your right way tip number five is
working with foundation chains now quite often people struggle with this because
they end up doing their foundation chain just way too tight or alternatively way
too loose so if you are one of those people the best thing that you need to
do is just go up a size or two with your hook when you'll work in the foundation
chain and then go back to the original size in order to actually work on the
work and that just makes that foundation chain a little bit bigger also make sure
that as you're putting the stitches into the foundation chain that you aren't
tugging too tightly on the chains themselves because that will actually
cause them to shrink in size and make it harder to get your needle in there and
the very last tip I'm going to give you is talking about the actual stitches
themselves I'm going to show you now where people might go wrong when they're
actually creating their stitches and where exactly it might be that they are
getting their tension wrong okay so when it comes to actually doing your stitches
you want to make sure that you're not pulling too tightly on this and tension
piece here or on this piece of yarn here because if you pull too tightly you're
going to make your work work too tight but equally if this was too loose then in your
work would be to loose as well so I'll show you the part where people
usually tend to go wrong when it comes to tension and I'm going to show you
this with a treble crochet and this is the UK treble in the US this is known as
double crochet so if I was to yarn over and put my hook in the and yarn should
slightly pull through your fingers so where it's wrapped around my little
finger here I'm not holding on too tightly there it's just to create a
little bit more attention so I'm going to grab the yarn and pull it back
through now this is a place where people tend to use have too much tension because
they pull too tight on here they don't pull up this loop enough and then they
go ahead and try and grab the yarn and then because they're pulling too tight
you can't get it back through so at this point what you want to do is once you've
joined this loop through just pull up slightly just so you're creating a
little bit more of a gap in this and chain just here and then you can grab
the yarn and pull it through both loops on the hook and again don't pull too
tightly on this piece of yarn here if you're holding on and it's a lot firmer
then that is too you're holding onto it too tight with this hand and then grab
the yarn and just pull it through both loops on the hook so I'll show you what
would happen if you're doing your tension a little bit too loose as well
you would grab the yarn and pop it through and then as you grab the yarn
and pull it through again if you pull that up too much so you created a really
big loop and you're pulling through and then pull it through you can see that
that stitch is just way too loose and not very defined so just make sure that
you are really being aware of how firm you are holding
the yarn in your hand it will take practice and it will take time you'll
find your own way of doing things as well so I really hope you found those
hints and tips useful go away give them a go let me know in the comments below
if you found these helpful thank you so much for watching and I shall see you
again next time bye