How to crochet: For Absolute beginners

Welcome! I’m so glad you decided to learn how to crochet! This is a craft that is super easy and fun to do because when you get the hang of it you can make just about anything. All you need to do is get used to holding your hook and your yarn, make a slip knot, crochet a chain and your good to go! In addition you will also learn how to crochet one of the basic crochet stitches, the single crochet.

In the beginning of my crochet journey I watched a ton of videos and tutorials on you tube to make sure I get this right. I’m sort of a perfectionist and wanted my projects to look exactly like they did in the photo’s and videos. However, practice makes perfect! You need to make some sample squares in the beginning to get the feel for how to hold your hook and yarn and to make sure you understand your tension. Don’t worry if you end up with a lot of squares! You can connect them and make a blanket at the end! How cool is that?!

In this written tutorial I am going to show you how to hold your hook and yarn, make a slip knot, crochet a chain, single crochet and to finish off and weave in your ends.

What you will need to start:

Most importantly you will need yarn, the recommended size crochet hook, scissors and a yarn needle.

I recommend that you start off with a thicker yarn and the hook recommend by the yarn label.

That said, how do you know what to look for when you go yarn shopping? On the yarn label you will see the number showing what size your yarn is, it looks like this:

How to hold your hook:

Firstly everybody is different. There are no right or wrong way for holding your crochet hook.

But there are two common ways for holding it, the knife hold and the pencil hold.

I use the knife hold as it feels much more comfortable for me. But it is totally up to you!

How to make a slip knot:

Before we get to how to hold your yarn, we are going to make a slip knot and place it on your hook!

The slip knot is most commonly used to start your crochet project. You will need to know this, as almost all patterns don’t instruct you to make one at the beginning of the pattern. If you had to do something else, like when your making toys/amigurumi, the pattern will call for a “magic circle”, but we’ll get to that in the next tutorial.

Here’s how to make a slip knot:

• Measure out around 3 inches of yarn. Grab the yarn with three fingers and point your index finger outward. Just like making a finger gun! 🙂
• Wrap the yarn over your index finger once with the short end at the front of your finger.

• Wrap the yarn around your finger once again, so that you have two “loops” around your finger.
• Grab both ends, the short tail and the long tail (attached to the ball of yarn), also known as the working yarn, with your thumb and middle finger.

• Take the back loop and pull it over the front loop, but don’t pull it off all the way.

• Now take the back loop and pull it off your finger completely and tighten the knot. Make sure not to make it super tight because you want the slip knot to be able to slip up and down.

Ta-da! You made your first slip knot!

Insert your hook into the slip knot and pull on the working yarn. Make sure the tail end faces towards the hook.

How to hold your yarn:

Okay, we’ve learned how to hold your hook and how to make slip knot, now we conjure on to how to hold your yarn.

Isn’t this exciting?! 🙂

The way you hold your yarn determines how tight or loose your tension will be. Whether you are right handed or left handed, your hand needs to be relaxed holding the yarn. Not too tight or too loose.

This is again, is totally up to you, but this is the way I hold mine.

• With your slip knot connected to the hook, hook in your working hand – place the yarn between your middle and index finger.
• Wrap the yarn around your pinky, coming back up to the front of your index finger. Then wrap it to the back of your finger.

Again, you can determine how you hold your yarn so that it flows easily through your hand as you crochet. Whatever you are comfortable with.

How to make a chain:

You’ve come so far already! Crocheting your first chain can be daunting because it still feels a bit weird.. But you will certainly get the hang of it the more you practice!

So you have your slip knot on your hook, now you need to hold the slip knot in place with your thumb and middle finger against your hook.

• To make a chain, bring your yarn over your hook from back to front and grab it with your hook. Pull the hooked yarn through the slip knot.

And that’s it, your first chain! Yay!! Repeat this step until you have 21 chains. The loop on your hook does not count as a chain. Your chain should look something like this:

For the chain you need to remember that practice makes perfect. Your chain needs to be loose enough so that you can see through the chain. You will notice if it is too tight when you work into the chain and can’t fit your hook through the chain. If your tension is still a bit too tight, you can switch to a bigger size hook. This will make the chain a bit looser.

Let’s take a closer look at your chain…

The picture below shows how to count your chain stitches. For the next part you will work into these stitches.

Still a bit confused? 🙂

I made a tutorial on YouTube that shows you everything I just mentioned above in a quick 8 minute video!! (Yay!!!) Click here!

Remember to subscribe to my YouTube Channel and click the notification bell to be notified when a new video is posted!

The single crochet

Okay, lets learn how to crochet the single crochet stitch!

Click here for the YouTube Tutorial! 🙂

Keep an eye out on how I hold my chain between my middle finger and thumb, as you work down your chain move the work down using your fingers.

• Skip the first chain and insert your hook into the center of the next chain.

• Bring your yarn over your hook from back to front and grab it with your hook (also known as Yarn over), and pull through the chain and up your hook. There should be two loops on your hook.

• Bring your yarn over your hook from back to front and grab it with your hook, and pull through both loops on your hook. One loop remains on your hook. You’ve just made your first single crochet!

• Continue to make 19 single crochet down the entire chain. Your chain of single crochet should look something like this and you should have 20 single crochets in total:

Moving on to the next row:

• Now, to start crocheting on the top of the chain you need to chain 1 (yarn over, pull through the loop on your hook). This chain 1 is the turning chain. The turning chain helps to keep your sides of your work straight.

• Turn your work the same way every time. It doesn’t matter which way you turn your work, as long as you turn it the same way every time.

• To continue down the row, insert your hook into the last single crochet you made in the previous row. Have a look down below. you will see that this is the single crochet next to the chain 1.

• Notice in the picture above, how the stitch looks. You should put your hook through both the front and back loop of the stitch. You will see that it looks like a V.

• Yarn over and pull through the stitch, you have two loops on your hook.

• Yarn over and pull through, and you’ve completed your single crochet on the second row.

And that’s about it! You can crochet! So if you want to use this square as just a sample piece, you can practice how to the weave in the ends too! Below I’ll show you how to finish off and weave in your ends!

Finish off and weave in the ends

Cutting the yarn is the most satisfying feeling (other than seeing your finished product of course).

Patterns will call for FO / Finish off which means the dame thing as cut your yarn and tighten the loop. Below are photo’s of the process for both finishing off and weaving in the ends. (It’s really super easy)

Weaving in the ends

And that’s it! 🙂

You can now continue to practice the single crochet by making more squares for a blanket / throw.

In conclusion, I really enjoyed creating this tutorial for you! Please feel free to comment if you have any questions and don’t forget to follow me on all my social media platforms! Also, subscribe to the newsletter so you get all the newest tutorials and best of all free patterns!

I hope to see you at the next tutorial!