Crochet Hacks

What actually works when you are crocheting and running out of patience

I have been crocheting for over twelve years, mostly amigurumi and sweaters. The stuff I am going to describe here is not from a blog post. It is from ripping out projects at 11pm because I messed up a tension readjustment or because I could not figure out why my stitch count was off by three. The biggest one that beginners miss is something called wrapping the yarn around your finger while you work. Most people hold the yarn tension between their index finger and middle finger the traditional way. What actually works better is wrapping the yarn once around your index finger and letting it sit there, so each time you pull through a stitch the yarn feeds smoothly without you constantly readjusting your grip. This is especially useful when you are doing long rounds like blankets. My tension stopped fluctuating and my hands stopped cramping after I switched to this method about four years ago. Another thing that is not talked about enough is the reverse single crochet, also called the crab stitch, used as an edging technique. People assume it is only decorative. It is actually one of the strongest edges you can put on a garment or blanket. When I worked on a baby blanket project last year, the edge kept curling and distorting after washing. I switched to a round of reverse single crochet and the edge stayed flat for the rest of the life of that project. It took about twenty extra minutes but it made the finished piece look professionally blocked.

Here is a counter-intuitive point about hook size and yarn weight. People follow the yarn label recommendation religiously. The label will tell you to use a 5mm hook with worsted weight yarn. But if you are making something that needs to drape, like a shawl or a garment, going up one hook size usually gives you better fabric hand. The stitches open up more and the result feels softer against the skin. Conversely, if you want structure like in an amigurumi toy, going down one hook size prevents gaps in your work. I learned this the hard way when I made a stuffed animal and the stuffing showed through every other stitch because the hook was too large for the yarn. Yarn needle weaving in ends is another area where most people waste time. The hack is to thread the yarn tail through the eye of the needle, then run the needle through the back of the stitches where the tail was originally worked, crossing the path in opposite directions. This locks the tail in place so it cannot unravel even if you tug on the fabric later. I used to just weave the tail back and forth three times and then three months later the end would pop loose. Now I do the cross-path method and it has never failed me. A single end takes about thirty seconds this way instead of two minutes of guesswork. Marking your stitch pattern with locking safety pins instead of plastic stitch markers changes how fast you can work. Plastic markers slide off when you are working tight stitches or dense crochet. Safety pins hold firmly and you can see them easily in dim light. I switched after finishing a dark-colored sweater where my purple plastic markers disappeared into the fabric and I spent twenty minutes searching for where I was in the pattern. The safety pins cost about four dollars for a pack of fifty and they last forever.

One thing that does not work well and I want to be honest about this is trying to un-ravel a project quickly by pulling the working yarn. This sounds obvious but people do it all the time. When you pull the working yarn, the stitches unravel in an uncontrollable spiral and you end up with a tangled mess that takes longer to fix than just frogging with the hook. If you need to rip back, insert the hook into the stitch above the one you just made, catch the working yarn, and pull it through slowly. One stitch at a time. It is slower but it keeps your work organized and you do not lose your place. Temperature and humidity affect yarn behavior in ways that are rarely mentioned. Cotton yarn, which I use for market bags and dishcloths, becomes slightly looser in humid weather and tighter in dry air. If you are working a pattern that requires precise stitch count and the room is very humid, your gauge will shift. I once made a set of coasters and by the end the last one was noticeably larger than the first because the house was humid that week and I had not accounted for it. The workaround is to check your gauge on the first piece and adjust your hook size before starting the rest of the set. Here is a quick method for joining yarn without leaving a thick bump. Instead of tying a knot, overlap the old and new yarns by about two inches and crochet over both strands together for the first six stitches. Then trim the tails. The join disappears into the fabric and you do not have any hard knots that can catch on skin or show through thin yarn. I use this method for almost everything except projects where I need to switch colors mid-round, which is a different technique entirely.

The one real downside to all of these methods is that they take time to learn. None of them are instant. The finger-wrap tension method feels awkward for about a week before it becomes natural. The reverse single crochet edge looks confusing until you complete the first round. The cross-path weave-in looks like overkill until you see that it actually holds. But once these become automatic, the time you save on finishing and correcting mistakes is significant. A project that might have taken eight hours with standard techniques often drops to five or six once you have these habits locked in.