If you have been following my series on Long Hook Crochet Techniques you will be beginning to see why I've been feeling so confused! You may also be thinking that you have already read this post. You haven't! This is all about making joined rounds of Tunisian crochet. You will have seen socks being knitted on a number of small knitting needles. This is what we are going to do but with Tunisian crochet. It requires multiple double ended crochet hooks and just one ball of yarn.
I am going to assume that you can already work Tunisian Crochet. You begin with a joined ring of chain stitches and pull up a loop in each stitch. To keep things simple, my swatch uses 36 stitches which is easily divisible by 3, so I place 12 stitches on each of my three double ended hooks. Now turn and start working off the stitches; Yarn over and pull through one stitch on the hook. Yarn over and pull through 2 stitches on the hook, continue until you have worked all the stitches off the first hook. Slide the remaining loop on to the next hook and continue working off the stitches. When you are left with just one stitch on the last hook you are ready to join the round. How you join the round depends on the type of stitch you are using.
Knit stitch join:
Drop the last loop off the hook, insert the hook through the first stitch in the round to make a new knit stitch, replace the dropped loop on the hook, yarn over and pull through all the loops on the hook. The resulting loop on the hook is the first stitch of the new round.
Alternate Purl stitch join:
The information that I have uses a different purl stitch to the one I am used to. It is a Knit stitch made backwards.
To work this purl stitch:
Bring the yarn to the front of the work. Place the hook from back to front, between the vertical loops and under the horizontal chain stitches.Yarn over from front to back and pull through a loop.
To make the join:
Leave the last loop on the hook, work a purl stitch as above and when you pull the loop through the stitch pull it through the remaining loop on the hook as well. The resulting loop on the hook is the first stitch of the new round.
Standard Purl stitch join:
This is my solution to a standard purl stitch join.
After the last "pull through 2 loops", hold the yarn to the back of the hook as you turn. (The yarn has come round the back end of the hook to the front.) Place the hook under the vertical bar from right to left, yarn over the hook from front to back and pull through all the loops on the hook. The resulting loop on the hook is the first stitch of the new round.
Simple stitch join:
I can find no instructions for this stitch so this is what I came up with. You may come up with a better solution!
Drop
the last loop off the hook, insert the hook under the vertical bar from right to left, insert the hook into the horizontal chain stitch, replace the dropped loop on the
hook, yarn over and pull through all the loops on the hook. The resulting loop on the hook is the first stitch of the new round.
I hummed and hawed about including this post in our Long Hook series. I have not found this information anywhere else online. I am not particularly enamoured by the technique. Probably in most cases working in a continuous spiral will be less complicated and give a better result. However if you are using a particularly tall stitch you might like to give it a try. Now that you have the information you can make up your own mind!
Fastening off...
