How to Crochet in the Round

Crochet is like learning to ride a bike, to start with it feels impossible. The more you learn the easier it gets until you forget how hard you found it to start with. When someone told me recently that they found working in the round difficult, I was initially surprised, but actually there’s a lot to it. I thought I was going to be just covering the basics, but instead I've learnt lots of new things that I'm excited to share with you.

Whether you are making a flat Mandala, an Amigurumi creature or just a sleeve, you’ve got to start somewhere. So, let’s start there, at the beginning!

You might use a magic ring/ sliding loop. There are 3 ways to do this:

1.You might use a simple ‘chain2’. I talked about this here.

2.You might use the single-wrap magic ring. I talked about that here.

3.You might use the more complex double-wrap magic ring. I have to admit, I’ve only just mastered this one. So, let’s look at that now.

This technique eluded me for quite some time. Here's what you do. 

Wrap the yarn twice, grab the working yarn from inside, pull it through and make the starting chain. (Pics 1&2)

Work the stitches around as normal. Now gently tug the tail just a little way and notice which of the two loops begins to tighten. Lets call that the outer loop. (Pic3)

Take hold of that outer loop and pull it to close the inner loop first. (Pic4)

Now you can close the outer loop by pulling on the tail. (Pic5)

In all these instances you might find it helpful to wait until you’ve made the second round of stitches before you fully tighten your centre. It just makes it easier to make that second round of stitches.

You can also start a flat motif with a ring of chain stitches which are joined with a slip-stitch. The first round of stitches is made ‘over’ the chain stitches.

If you are making a tube you might be starting with chain stitches and working into these stitches. My tension is never quite right in this case. Wherever possible I almost always begin with foundation stitches. I talked about that here. If you use foundation stitches, you’ll find a little gap at the join. So before you start, begin that foundation row with a reverse slip knot and a long tail. Use the tail to sew your gap closed.

Reverse slip knots are recent discoveries for me, I almost always use them now. Quite simply make the knot by holding the yarn the wrong way up. When made this way pulling the tail closes and tightens the slip knot.

It’s not always possible to use foundation stitches, so I have found two things which help.

1. Use a hook one size larger than the rest of the project.
2. Change the angle as you pull the hook through the stitches. I find this gives me slightly larger and more consistent chains. Instead of holding the hook horizontally, hold it vertically and allow the whole length of the hook's 'head' to determine the size of the chain stitch.

Now that we have our first row of stitches we have a choice. We can work in a spiral with no join or seam, or we can join with a slip stitch and work in rounds. 

Working in a spiral is the easiest and neatest option if you are using short stitches. This is the method usually used in Amigurumi. This is usually where things go horribly wrong for me! It won't be long before I am pulling out rounds trying to get back to the last place I had the right stitch count. Here are my rules.
1. Mark the start of each round with a locking stitch marker, and lock it! Move it up as you go.

2. Keep a piece of scrap paper to hand and mark off your round count as you go, as well as keeping a tally of any stitch repeats. Always make a note of your progress before putting the work down.

3. Even when you are doing all of this, my voice of experience says make a stitch count at the end of any round with increases or decreases.

Working in rounds which are joined with a slip stitch presents two problems, you end up with a seam and it's very easy to add in extra stitches.

If you are making something like a Mandala and changing colours frequently a solution would be to use Standing Stitches at the start of a round and finish with a Needle Join. When you start a new colour always begin in a different place from last time to stagger the join.

If you are only working in one colour then standing stitches won't help you. The traditional method is to join each round with a slip stitch. If you go with that method make sure you tighten the slip stitch by hand (rather than just tugging on the hook). I also find it helps to mark the last real stitch before the slip-stitch so I know when to stop. And once again, it's always good discipline to stop and count your stitches!

Did you know that there are two other methods of making slip stitches? No me neither!

From back to front:

In this method your working loop ends up in the same place it would if you were about to make a regular stitch.

Remove your hook from the loop; insert the hook into the next stitch; place the loop back on the hook and pull through the stitch to the front. (I've used two different colours in the photo above to make it clearer, the working loop is the pale blue.)

From front to back:

In this version your working loop ends up behind the stitch you're about to work into.

Remove your hook from the loop; insert the hook into the next stitch from the back through to the front; place the loop back on the hook and pull through the stitch to the back.

At this point I realise we have so many options it gets really confusing. So let's consider a few.

The traditional method is to close the round with a slip-stitch, chain one to get the hook up to the right height, and then work the first stitch in the same place as the slip-stitch.

Some pattern writers tell us just to use a chain-one in place of the first stitch. When we finish the round we slip-stitch to that chain-one.

You might want to consider using something like a Chainless Starting Stitch to avoid using starting chain stitches at the beginning of each round. I've written about this before but what I left out was double crochet stitches (SC-USA).

The method is to pull up an oversized loop and go straight into the first double crochet (SC-USA). In the image above I combined that method with the 'front to back' slip stitch. So that the loop was made on the back and the double crochet was made through the front.

In this image, above, I tried combining the 'back to front' slip stitch with with a Chainless Treble Starting Stitch (Dc-USA). If you are feeling confused at this point I don't blame you, so am I! I will be playing about with the techniques and looking for the best solution for each project I make.

To turn or not to turn. I started off crocheting flat things like doilies where there is an obvious front and back. It took a while before I realised that I could turn my work at the end of the round as if I was working in rows. There are two advantages to this; firstly some stitch patterns can only be achieved by turning at the end of each 'row', and secondly it stops the stitches skewing off to the one side, especially with squares.

The red tube, above, is made without turning. You can see how the seam down the middle is starting to move to the right. The white tube is turned at the end of each row and the seam is straight. The blue tube is made using 'self compensating crochet'. You put your hook into the stitch as normal, but instead of 'yarn over the hook', you 'hook over the yarn'. Then continue to make the rest of the stitch as usual. This technique makes the stitches lean slightly back to the left, so the seam is a little straighter.

I've left the worse bit till last. (I know, I can hear you saying, 'Really?!' at this point.) It's the mathematics! If you are trying to make a flat motif and it starts to buckle or go wavy at the edges then you’ve got the wrong number of stitches. If it’s just a round or two you may be able to correct it with blocking or by changing your hook size. But there are some simple maths for this.

A flat circle of:

Double-crochet stitches (Sc-USA) should increase by 6 stitches each round.

Treble-crochet stitches (Dc-USA) should increase by 12 stitches each round.

The increases need to be spread out evenly around your circle, and you have to take care not to stack them on top of each other or you'll end up with a hexagon! If just the idea of any kind of maths has you heading for the hills try this post by ahooka'migurumi. To ensure that it's really quite simple I made one circle using the traditional recipe (blue-left) and one in using ahooka's (grey-right).

If you want the basic recipe for other shapes, I can’t recommend Edie Eckman’s ‘The Crochet Answer Book' enough. You might also look for her two books on crochet motifs.

I apologise for the amount of information I've just hurled at you. When I sat down to write it I had no idea it would get this long. I know you're sensible, you'll pick out the juicy bits and leave the rest behind!

Fastening off..