- [Kristen] Learn to crochet for the beginner,
today we learn single crochet.
Welcome back to GoodKnit Kisses where we stitch
our love and love our stitches.
I'm your host Kristen and I'm gonna be showing
you a series of beginner crochet videos.
This series is gonna be in my style
and I'm so happy to bring this to you
so stay tuned for all the videos that are coming.
We will take you through all the basic stitches
and steps and work as we go,
from single to half double,
double and triple crochet as well as
the linen stitch and working your
first granny square, to a solid granny square
and even a corner to corner blanker in this series.
As always I suggest that you watch the video
through the first time before attempting
to get the idea and all the tips along the way,
then grab your yarn and hook and pause as needed
to crochet along with me.
As the first video in our series,
we're gonna have extra tips for you packed in here.
We'll talk about holding your hook,
holding your yarn, what type of hook and yarn
we're using, how to make a foundation chain,
how to make your basic stitch of single crochet
and also how to fix mistakes, if you have a hole
how to go backwards easily.
Go all the way to the end,
and even some tips at the end for saving your work
and finishing it off.
Let's begin.
To start crocheting of course we need some yarn
and a hook, today I'm working with the medium
number four weight yarn.
This is a nice smooth simple, light colored yarn
you can use a gray or a brown or a white,
I would just keep it nice and light
so you can see your stitches.
We're gonna need a hook and I am working with
a size I-9 hook or a five and a half millimeter
and that five and a half millimeter is the measurement
around the shaft part
and that's what makes your stitches the size that they are.
Any hook will do, just work with whatever
you're comfortable with and you will find that you
may enjoy metal or wood or plastic.
Right now I'm working with a metal hook.
This is the hook part
and then this is, or the head,
sometimes it's called the head,
and this part underneath that is the throat
and that's what catches the yarn.
So I may mention those parts here in the video
just so you know what I'm talking about.
I'll lay my hook down for a moment,
I'm gonna create a slip knot.
Just make it however it's easy for you.
I wind my yarn around my first finger here,
put the back loop over the front
and then do it one more time, up and over
the tip of my finger to make a loop.
I'm gonna insert my hook in my loop
and then pull on it with the,
what's coming from the ball,
that's just called the working yarn
so we're gonna pull through that.
Make sure it's nice and loose,
you don't want it tight on there.
And now we're gonna hold our hook,
you can hold it like a pencil
or you can hold it like a knife
or anywhere in between, whichever way is comfortable
for you.
For holding your yarn, I like to put it
on my pinky, some people wrap it around
I don't like to do that, it's too tight for me
so I just lay it over my pinky
and then lace it around the next finger
and then go around the other direction
on the next finger
and then go up and over my index finger
and that is what's comfortable for me.
And then I'm gonna grab it with my,
pinch it between these two fingers,
my thumb and my finger
to hold the slip knot in place
and sometimes I use this finger here
to keep it in place on this shaft
which makes sure that we have it all the right
size stitches.
And that's it.
So now we're going to work on the foundation chain,
we're going to chain as many chains as wide
as we want for our project,
I'm gonna do 20 to get 20 stitches.
For single crochet, you need to add one
so I'm gonna make 21 chains.
This is how we start our chain.
So we're gonna take our hook
and go towards my hand
and go underneath this yarn here
all the way around and then make that throat pull
on that yarn and we're gonna go down
and face our little head downward and it will go
through this little tear drop shape here
and through all the way
and we're gonna pull it back to the shaft
and that makes one stitch.
And when we do that moving around
and twisting our hands on the right here
and twist this head, it pulls through really easily
and making sure to come back here to do
the shaft part to make sure the measured stitch
is the right size.
So let's do that a few more times.
We're going to go around,
grab it and pull through
and go back to the shaft to make sure it's the right size.
One more time.
Pull it through and then you've made three chains
and you can see those chains here,
one two three.
The slip knot and the loop
that's on the hook does not count
so I've got three and then I'm gonna take
my thumb and move it down here to get it closer
to the hook so I can create some more.
Alright we're gonna keep going,
go ahead and do 21 and I will meet you back up
at that point, pause your video and I'll see you soon.
Once you make your chain inspect it, look at it.
If it looks nice and loose, you can see
through it a little bit, they all seem pretty consistent,
you should just go ahead and move on.
If it seems tight to you or when you get
to this next step and you can't put your hook
through then I would try doing it one more time,
you could go up a couple hook sizes
at least one hook size at that point here
and then when you get to the point where we are here
you would put in your main hook size back in
and then that way your chain won't be, your chain
won't be just a little bit bigger
than your hook size here and you'll be able
to work into it.
Sometimes that beginning chain can be pretty tight.
Okay if you've made too many stitches
you can just pull your hook out
and then you just pull on your working yarn
and pop out that stitch okay and then
just put in your hook and then you have enough.
If you need to count them, be sure
and don't count what's on the hook
and count down, this would be the first stitch here,
the first chain and this would be the next one
and the next one so you go one two three four
and all the way down until you make sure
you have enough.
Alright let's begin our single crochet.
So I'm gonna wind it around my fingers.
To begin single crochet we're going
to go into the second chain from the hook
so this first one here is this one,
not what's on the hook and then we're going
to go into the second one.
So remember how I said you have an extra stitch?
This is the extra stitch that you're skipping
so we're going to go into the second one,
I just go into one loop.
This is on the foundation chain only.
And then we're going to yarn over
just as we've done before,
pull through that chain so now you have two loops
on your hook and now we're gonna yarn over again
and pull through both of the loops
all the way through.
You have just made a single crochet.
That single crochet is the one single time
that you pulled it through that last time,
okay, that's why it's called a single.
And we're going to move onto the next one.
This one right here that's all stretched out,
that's the one that the yarn just went through
and made that stitch so we're going to move down,
we're going to follow that down
and we're going to go to this one.
We're going to put our yarn,
our hook through there.
We're going to yarn over and pull through
that stitch and then yarn over and pull through
both loops.
That's two.
We're going to go into the next one and do it again.
Go through, pull through one,
yarn over, pull through two.
Alright so you're going to continue
making single crochets all the way down to the end,
I'll show you the last couple of 'em
and then we'll turn and move onto the next row.
See you in a moment.
Alright I've come down to the end and I said
I was going to have a couple of stitches left.
I have one stitch left but I wanna show you
how to back it up.
Say you look at your work and you think
oh I think I have a hole somewhere back here.
Well you can take your hook out
and put it through the stitch
that you think you need to go back to
and then simply pull on that yarn
and pop 'em out and you can go
all the way back to where you need to work.
And then work it and make sure you pick
out that stitch that had a hole.
Now I didn't have a hole in my work before
but that's just showing you how you can do it
that easily.
So I'm just gonna continue working my single
crochet to these last few stitches,
make sure it's not twisted,
we're gonna go into this stich here,
pull through.
And I'm even holding it different than I showed
you earlier see sometimes I just hold it different.
Okay so this is this last stitch here, okay.
Right here.
It's not the slip knot, we're just going
to last stitch, pull through,
okay and pull through here, okay.
Now we're at the end I wanted to kind of
make my slip knot, make sure it's on there
nice and even.
You can see all the tops of our stitches
make this nice V stitch like that,
a little chain and that's how you can count,
you count all your chains so these are together,
there are pairs,
one two three four five,
that's the top of your single crochet,
it goes all the way to the end
and you should have created 20 of those little chains.
Now on single crochet when we go to the next line up
and we wanna single crochet on the next row,
we yarn over and pull through
and we're gonna chain one.
So this is our turning chain,
chain one is a turning chain
on a single crochet.
You're going to turn your work
this direction, keep holding onto it
and now we're going to work into this first stitch
down here.
The first stitch is when I come down
to the single crochet, down here
into the stitch and I go through
these two stitches on the top okay?
So we're going through both of them.
Sometimes a direction will tell you to go through
the front loop or go through the back loop
and that's how you would do that.
But most of them want you to go through
both of them and it creates a nice even work
and reversible on both sides.
So we're just gonna pull through just as we did before
as we have two on our hook
and then we're gonna yarn over and pull through two.
And that is our first single crochet here.
We're gonna go through the next stitch
and pull through and yarn over and pull through two.
And you're just gonna continue working all the way
down the line until you're at the end.
And pause your video and meet me back up
and I'll show you what happens when you work
several rows like this
and how to yarn in those ends.
Alright see you in a moment.
Alright we're on our last stitch here.
Alright, now if I were to stop
this work and I wanted to continue on later,
I can leave this loop here in place
and go ahead and grab a stitch marker
and slip it through or like a safety pin
this is one that doesn't have this extra
little part on it so it doesn't catch on
the yarn and then I would just clip it,
I would just close it up and then have it for later.
You could also use a paper clip
to keep it in place, so I just wanted
to throw that little tip in there for you
if you haven't seen that before.
Alright so I'm gonna go ahead
and finish this off, I want to cut my yarn
about a four or six inch tail
and then we're going to yarn over
and pull through completely.
And that is how we fasten off
and what I like to do is go ahead
and wrap all this back in here
with a tapestry needle.
You can use your hook but it's better
to use a tapestry needle.
So to darn in your ends, you're going to need
a tapestry needle, this is a straight
blunt end one,
this one is also metal just like that last one
but it is, has a
curved or bent end on it and it's also sharp
so you can get right up and under
these stitches
and then here's a plastic needle with a kind of
semi-sharpish tip on here.
And this one you can probably see very well
on camera.
I'm actually going to use this one
with this sharp edge on it and I can
get really up and into these stitches.
So we're just gonna thread that on through
your tapestry needle.
And I'm going to go into
these stitches back here, I like to go up and around
the back.
And really lock that in okay.
There's a few different ways to do this,
sometimes you can actually split your yarn here
and go in two different directions
to really weave it in.
I like to go through these stitches here,
go through a few of 'em.
Okay.
And then I will go down
a few rows.
And one of the best things to do
is also go back over some of these stitches
and go backwards so I come back this way
and go through some of these stitches
that I went through before and it will
lock it into place and therefore
whenever you clip this, and you put it in the wash
it's not going to come undone and fray
especially if you're giving this away as a gift.
And what's also nice about one of these needles here
is I can split the yarn,
I can go in between the stitches here
and really get it locked into place.
You wanna make sure I'm not going
through to the other side and showing it
and this is still a stretchy fabric
and you're not seeing it through here.
So you're going to continue going around
and I'll go back up and over the last stitch
I created and back through here.
So this is in here pretty good,
I don't think this is going to be going anywhere
and I'm gonna pull out my needle
and get my sharp scissors
and before I wash this, I'm actually going
to cut it just a little longer
so that when I wash it,
it will actually work back in there and it won't pop
out the other side so,
and if I give it a little bit of a tug
you'll see that it pops back into this stich
and you don't see it so if you cut it too short
it might pop out somewhere else.
And that is how you do that.
I'll just work on the next one
and you'll be done with your sample.
I hope you enjoyed working on your single crochet
stitch, stay tuned for our next video
featuring the half double crochet stitch.
Alright be sure and subscribe down below
and click that link for notifications
so that you can get all the new videos
as they come out for our crochet series.
I hope you have a great day
and happy crochet, goodbye.
Thanks for joining us today
where we help you stich your love
and love your stitches.
See you again soon.