How to

Change Colors

Making stripes in your crocheting is easy!

  1. 1. On the last stitch before you want your new color to start, yarnover and pull through one loop.
  2. 2. Pick up your new color, yarnover, and pull through two loops with the new color. You are now ready to crochet normally with the new color.
  3. 3. Leaving a 6-inch tail, cut off the old color and weave in the loose end (see How to Weave In Ends), or leave the old color attached and pick it up again later if you want to alternate the colors.
PROJECT

Pencil Roll

We’re suckers for a roll-up of pencils arranged in rainbow order! And it’s just so handy for art on the go. Don’t worry: this project may look complicated, but it’s really just a straightforward rectangle of crochet. Of course, if you prefer, you could make this pouch for a different purpose: to hold your crochet supplies, say — hooks and scissors and such — or for your toothbrush, toothpaste, and comb when you’re away from home. Just size the channels accordingly to fit whatever you want to store and carry.

What You Need

How You Make It

Roll

  1. 1. Make a slip knot in the end of the yarn (see How to Make a Slop Knot), leaving a 6-inch tail. Insert the crochet hook and chain 25 stitches (see How to Chain Stitch). The finished chain should be about one and a half times the length of a standard pencil or whatever you plan to keep in your roll. You can undo some chain stitches to make it shorter or add some chain stitches to make it longer.
  2. 2. Single crochet (see How to Single Crochet) until the rectangle is wide enough to fit all the pencils you want to store. Test this by placing the pencils on top of the rectangle with 12-inch spaces between them. Leave an arm’s length of working yarn attached.
  3. 3. Fold up the bottom 4 inches of the rectangle to create the pocket for the pencils. Thread the working yarn through the sewing needle, then close up one side of the rectangle from the top to the bottom with the running stitch or whipstitch. Do not cut your yarn yet!
  4. 4. Slide a pencil (or whatever you will carry in your roll) into the folded pocket, as close to the stitched-up edge as possible, to use as your guide to make sure your channels are wide enough.

    Push the needle into the folded end of the fabric, then bring it back up through the fabric at the bottom edge about 3 stitches in from the side edge, or whatever distance you need to make your pencil fit snugly.

  5. 5. Use a running stitch to sew from the bottom fold to the top edge of the pocket, making sure you go through both pieces of fabric. You can use your crocheted stitches as a guide to keep your line of stitches straight.
  6. 6. Poke your needle up through the top edge and blanket stitch or whipstitch another pencil width over across the pocket edge. Then use a running stitch to sew back down the folded fabric from top to bottom for the second pencil.
  7. 7. Bring the needle up through the fabric another pencil width over, then repeat steps 5 and 6 until you get to the other edge of the roll. If the last channel you stitch ends up being the wrong size, use it for two pencils or for a special super-skinny pencil. Weave in the working yarn and starting tail (see How to Weave In Ends), and cut them.

Tie

  1. 1. To create a tie for your roll, insert your hook into the edge of a stitch about halfway up one short side of the finished rectangle. With a fresh length of working yarn, yarnover and pull your hook back through the edge stitch. You now have 1 loop on your hook.

    From here, chain (see How to Chain Stitch) a tie long enough to wrap once around the rolled case, about 6 inches. Knot your chain tightly at the end and snip the working tail.

  2. 2. Repeat step 1 to make a second chain coming out of the same side stitch.
  3. 3. Weave in the starting ends of both chains (see How to Weave In Ends), then wrap up your roll and tie a bow!
Tip

Be Square

If your rectangle of crocheted fabric is looking more like a triangle or trapezoid, you are probably unintentionally skipping stitches at the ends of the rows. Almost everyone does this when they first start crocheting. To prevent it, use your crochet hook to pull a scrap piece of a different-colored yarn through the first and last stitches of each row and leave them there. This way, you won’t miss working into those stitches when you come back to them.

How to

Increase Crochet Stitches

There are lots of ways to add stitches when you’re crocheting, and each method will do something different to the fabric you’re creating. To make the bowl shape you’ll need for creating the Hacked Sack, you’ll work 2 single crochet stitches into certain stitches of the ring. Don’t worry — we’ll tell you when you need to do this! And here’s how.

  1. 1. Insert the hook into the first stitch from the previous round and single crochet.
  2. 2. When your first single crochet stitch is complete, insert the hook again into the same stitch you just crocheted into. Single crochet.
How to

Decrease Crochet stitches

There are many ways to decrease stitches when you’re crocheting, but all of them result in making your fabric narrower. When making the Hacked Sack, you will decrease stitches to close up the ball. In this single crochet decrease, you will crochet 2 stitches together, ending up with 1 stitch. The advantage to this method is that it doesn’t leave a hole in your fabric — which is especially helpful when you’re filling that fabric with popcorn or beans!

  1. 1. Begin your single crochet stitch as normal: insert your hook under both strands of the next stitch and yarnover. Pull through; you now have 2 loops on your hook.
  2. 2. Insert the hook into the next stitch, yarnover, and pull through. You now have 3 loops on your hook.
  3. 3. Yarnover and pull your hook through all 3 loops. You now have just 1 stitch on your hook and have completed a single crochet decrease.
PROJECT

Hacked Sack

You might be more familiar with the brand name Hacky Sack! But whatever you call it, if you have a small footbag or sack, you always have a game to play — with one other person, a group, or even by yourself. Why not crochet one and keep it in your backpack?

Yes, this is the most advanced crochet project here, but you really can do it. And think how proud you’ll be when someone says, “Dude, cool Hacky Sack! Where’d you get it?” And you can shrug and say, “Oh, this old thing? I made it.”

What You Need

How You Make It

Setup

Make a slip knot (see How to Make a Slop Knot), leaving a 6-inch tail, and insert the crochet hook.

  1. 1. Chain 4 (see How to Chain Stitch). Insert the hook into the first chain stitch.
  2. 2. Yarnover and pull through both loops on the hook. This connects the circle so that you can crochet around and around, which is called (wait for it!) crocheting in the round.
  3. 3. There should be an empty place in the middle of the circle, like the hole in a donut.

Crocheting the Sack

Round 1: Chain 1, then work 6 single crochet stitches (see How to Single Crochet) into the hole. There is now a ring made of 6 stitches.

Round 2: Work 2 single crochet stitches into each stitch in the ring (see How to Increase Crochet Stitches). At the end of this round, you will have 12 stitches in the circle.

Round 3: Work 2 single crochet stitches in the first stitch of the previous round and 1 single crochet into the next stitch. Repeat — alternating between working 2 stitches (A) then 1 stitch (B) into each stitch from the previous row — until you get to the end of the round. You now have 18 stitches total.

Round 4: Work 2 single crochet stitches into the first stitch and 1 single crochet into the next 2 stitches. Repeat the 2-1-1 sequence until you get to the end of the round. You now have 24 stitches total, and your fabric will start to make a bowl shape! (This is good.)

Once the fabric begins to form a bowl, push it so it becomes a bowl going in the opposite direction — like you’re turning a hat inside out — and continue crocheting.

Rounds 5–9: Work 1 single crochet stitch all the way around for five rounds. There are no increases in these rounds, which we did with blue yarn, but you need to count the rounds.

Tip

Using Stitch Markers

Even the most experienced knitters and crocheters need help keeping track of their stitches. Craft stores sell fancy stitch markers, but you also can use something you have lying around the house, like a safety pin, a paper clip, or a little loop of a different-colored yarn. When crocheting a circle, place a stitch marker at the beginning of the round, moving it onto the new first stitch of the round each time you start a new one.

Round 10: Now, instead of increasing the number of stitches to make the circle bigger, you’ll start decreasing them to make it smaller again and close up the sphere. This is the pattern: (A) single crochet decrease 2 stitches together (see How to Decrease Crochet Stitches), then (B) single crochet the next 2 stitches the regular way; repeat this until you come to your stitch marker. You now have 18 stitches.

Round 11: Single crochet decrease 2 stitches together, and then single crochet the next stitch the regular way. Repeat this until you come to your stitch marker. You now have 12 stitches.

Filling

When the opening is fairly small, fill the ball with the popcorn or beans. The smaller the hole, the easier it will be to fill without spilling. Use a funnel if you have one — or make a funnel with a sheet of paper, or use a small spoon (see step 4 of the beanbag project).

Round 12: Single crochet decrease 2 stitches together. Repeat until you get to the end of the round. You now have 6 stitches.

Finishing

Snip the thread, leaving a 6-inch tail. Pull it all the way through the last stitch and thread the tail onto the blunt sewing needle. Work the tail through the top V of each stitch in the last round; pull the hole closed, then tie off and use the needle to weave in the ends (see How to Weave In Ends), and hide the tails inside the ball.

Fiber Crafts for Everyone!

This is a picture of the gorgeous afghan that Nicole’s Pop-pop — er, grandfather — crocheted when he was a young man. Nicole has heard that he made it when he was stationed with the army in North Carolina during basic training. This may or may not be true (you know how families can spin a bit of a yarn), but we do love to picture him sitting in the barracks with his crochet hook and a ball of wool while the men around him played poker and did push-ups.

There is, of course, nothing inherently gendered about making things with yarn: men have always done it, and women have always done it. In the Middle Ages, there were knitting guilds, where men apprenticed to become master knitters, and men knit alongside women during both world wars to make socks and bandages and fingerless gloves for the troops. The Craft Yarn Council estimates that currently two million boys and men are knitters, and Catherine’s teenaged son knit a scarf for his best friend (a girl who doesn’t knit) for Christmas.

Everybody knits and crochets and sews and weaves and embroiders and felts. Or at least, they should. Because crafting is awesome.