What do you need?
1. A hook of your choice – my recommendation is size 4 or 5, because they feel good in the hand and you can see the stitches easily, which is the most important thing for the beginning
2. Yarn – again, I recommend acrylic (soft, type Baby – almost every producer has this type). It is easy to work with and it withstands frogging (it doesn’t fall apart)
3. Yarn thickness – choose thickness according to the hook. I.e., if you decided to work with hook no. 4, it would be best to get yarn with thickness (3-4) or (4-4.5) – the number in parenthesis is the size of the hook. Every yarn has it written on the package.
4. Tape measure, markers and scissors are not needed for this tutorial because we are only practicing stitches.
5. Goodwill! 🙂
A quick note before the tutorial:
1. I started both stitches with a chain so you could see how many chains (stitches) are counted as the stitch we are doing, so you could later go into the next row or count stitches at the beginning easier.
2. At the end of the tutorial you can see how the stitches: single crochet, half double crochet and double crochet look like one after another – it is the best way to see the difference between them.
3. Same as with the single crochet, we will insert the hook underneath the stitch (V letter shape)!
Half double crochet
We start with a chain of 12. Half double crochet counts as two chains, so we will start our work in the third chain from the hook.
Reminder: the first chain is the one on the hook, the second is the one next to it, and then comes the third.
We are making half double crochet in the following way:
We yarn over (grab the yarn with the hook, so it is over the hook), so now we have two loops on the hook. Then we insert the hook through the stitch, grab the yarn with the hook, and pull the hook back through the stitch, so we have 3 loops on the hook.
Grab the yarn with the hook again and pull through all 3 loops – and we have half double crochet!
We will repeat this until the end of the row in each stitch. At the end you should have 10 half double crochet stitches.
Going into the next row:
Chain 2 (make the chain of 2 stitches) and turn your work. Yarn over once, so we again have 2 loops on the hook. Insert the yarn through the first stitch (the last stitch from the previous row – see the video), grab the yarn with the hook and pull back through the stitch, so we have 3 loops on the hook. As we did in the first row, grab the yarn with the hook and pull through all 3 loops – we made half double crochet again!
Double crochet
We again start with a chain of 12. This time we will start in 9th stitch (or chain), because the last 3 chains are skipped and counted as a stitch.
So, when you make the chain, skip 3 chains and work in the 4th chain from the hook (or 9th chain from the beginning).
We make the double crochet the following way:
Yarn over, so we have 2 loops on the hook. Then insert the hook through the chain (stitch), grab the yarn with the hook and pull back through, so we now have 3 loops on the hook.
Grab the yarn with the hook again and pull through 2 loops on the hook, the last one stays on the hook, so we will have 2 loops on the hook. Grab the yarn again and pull through both loops. The result is a double crochet. We will repeat this until the end of the chain.
When done, we will have 9 double crochets and one double crochet made of the chain 3.
Going into the next row:
We will chain 3, turn our work and we will skip the first stitch – chain 3 counts as a stitch. We will make a double crochet in the second stitch, and we will continue until the end of the row.
The last double crochet in the row is done in the same way as the others, except we will insert the hook through the top of the chain 3 and we will continue working as we did before (please see the video).
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