For the best results when doing Tunisian crochet, you need a special hook called an “afghan hook”. You can also use a double ended hook (and ignore one of the ends), or a cabled hook. The important thing is that the hook be the same size and shape after the head – so, no thumb rest, and no fancy handles. It’s also important, if you’re making something large, to have some kind of stopper on the end to keep the loops from sliding off. Afghan hooks and most cabled hooks come with a stopper. When I use a double ended hook for this I usually wrap an elastic band around the unused head.

Also, you need to use a bigger hook than you normally would for the yarn you’re using. I suggest going up two sizes. For this yarn, I normally use a 5mm hook. When using it for Tunisian crochet, I use a 6mm hook. You’ll want to experiment – using an even larger hook can take care of curling problems, but can also result in a lacier fabric.

Let’s get started!

As with a lot of crochet techniques, start with a base chain:

Insert the hook in the second chain from the hook (I like to go into the back bump – it makes the bottom of the piece look nicer)

Yarn over:

Pull through and add that loop to your hook:

Insert the hook into the next chain, yarn over, and add that loop to your hook. Keep going until you have done this with every stitch:

Note: I started with 10 chains, and I now have 10 loops on my hook – the number of loops matches the number of chains.

Now it’s time to work the loops off of the hook. Start by yarning over:

And pull through one loop:

Yarn over

And pull through two loops:

Repeat: *yarn over, pull through two loops* until there is only one loop left on the hook

The first row is done! This is always how the first row is done in Tunisian crochet. What forms this row into the desired stitch is how you work into it on the next row.

The Tunisian Simple stitch is usually the first one you learn. There’s a reason why it’s called that… it’s certainly the easiest one to describe!

To do the second rows (and all subsequent rows), you start by inserting the hook, from right to left, behind the second vertical bar:

Yarn over:

and pull that loop onto the hook:

Repeat this process by inserting the hook behind the next vertical bar, and pulling that loop onto the hook until you have only one vertical bar left, the one at the very end. You *can* insert the hook the same way you have been so far, but for a nicer left side edge, you can insert the hook in a special way for the last stitch:

It’s a bit tricky to see in that picture, but where you insert the hook is immediately to the right of the end vertical bar, and to the left of a little vertical section nearest the hook in the picture. You insert the hook from front to back through the fabric, leaving two vertical bars on one side of the hook:

and lift that loop onto the hook.

Any way you slice it, when you’re done, you’ll have the same number of loops on your hook as stitches you started with:

And then work them off as you did before: yarn over and pull through one loop, then *yarn over, pull through two loops* over and over until you only have one loop left on the hook.

Continue adding rows in this manner until you are satisfied with the length of the project. It should look something like this:

You may notice that the last row you make seems a bit lacy, or hole-y. This is normal. When you finish a Tunisian piece, you need to slip stitch across the top to close this up.

It is important to note that because, as mentioned earlier, the row above a row is what gives it its definition, that when you slip stitch to end a piece, you need to insert the hook in the manner of the stitch you are creating. In this example we are doing the Tunisian Simple stitch, and so we will always insert the hook from right to left behind the vertical bars. If you were doing the Tunisian Knit stitch, you would insert the hook through the fabric (as described in the Tunisian Knit stitch tutorial) when doing the slip stitch.

In pictures:
Insert the hook behind the next vertical bar and yarn over:

Pull through (including through the loop on the hook) :

Repeat for each stitch: insert the hook, yarn over, pull through both loops (slip stitch) until you reach the end.

Cut the yarn and pull it through the last loop, and you’re done!

As you can see, this swatch is curling a bit. This is normal. The Tunisian Simple stitch is slightly bigger on the back than it is on the front – it’s not as big a difference as with the Tunisian Knit stitch, though.

You do left side short row shaping on the “picking up loops” part of a row. Simply pick up loops, but stop short of reaching the end, like so:

Work the loops off as usual.

When you’re ready to do a regular row again, you simply lift up a loop in every stitch of the previous row AND in every previously missed stitch:

Then work the loops off as usual.

Right side short row shaping happens on the “working loops off of the hook” part of the row.

Start by lifting a loop up in every stitch:

When working the loops off of the hook, stop before you reach the end. Here, I’ve got two more stitches to go (the loop closest to the head of the hook is the working loop and doesn’t count as a stitch)

You start the next row by lifting a loop up in the second vertical bar from the hook and in each subsequent stitch.

When you’re done doing your short row shaping, you work all of the loops off as normal:

Here is a swatch that I hope makes it easier to see what is going on.

I started with 15 stitches. Each short row misses 3 stitches, and this pattern continues until there are only 3 stitches left. Shaping on the left side:

Now shaping on the right side:

The whole swatch:

This stitch makes a thick fabric which I have found excellent for mittens.

Start out the same way you would with any Tunisian crochet – make a base chain, lift up loops in each stitch, and then work them off, or use the Crochet Cast-On (in re-writing this tutorial is occurs to me that I haven’t made one for the basics of Tunisian crochet. I’ll make one once I’ve re-written the missing posts!)

Time to insert the hook! With Tunisian Simple stitch you work with the vertical bars, but those vertical bars are just the loops that were lifted onto the hook on the last row. For the Tunisian Knit stitch, you still insert the hook from right to left into that loop…

But you also push the hook through the fabric – it should come out the back to the left (as seen from above) of the vertical bar at the back:

Yarn over:

And pull a loop up onto the hook:

You’ll notice as you work that your project is curling severely:

This is normal for the Tunisian Knit stitch. It is bigger on the back than it is on the front, and so it curls. You can minimise the curl a little bit by going up to an even bigger hook size than you normally would go up to with Tunisian crochet. Blocking might help if you’re using a natural fibre; or you could try adding a border.

In this picture, I’m hoping you can see why this is called a “knit” stitch:

I am now officially a crochet instructor at Michaels, specifically, the Michaels at Dixie Mall, where I am also a sales floor associate.

My first class will be on Tuesday, March 6th, from 6:30 – 8:30 pm, called Discover Time For Crochet. In this inaugural class, we will be learning how to do Tunisian Crochet. This class is perfect for both absolute beginners (those who have never crocheted before) and for crocheters who are looking for a new technique to learn.

In this class we will be making this fingerless glove:

We’ll cover the Tunisian Simple Stitch and the Tunisian Purl Stitch. If we have time, we’ll touch on the Tunisian Knit Stitch and other interesting possibilities presented to us by this neat technique.

This class costs $25. If you sign up on March 3rd, you’ll get a 25% discount! For supplies, you’ll need one ball of Patons Astra yarn and a 5mm afghan hook. Depending on what coupons you have, these supplies will cost somewhere between $10 and $15. We’ll start the class with a trip to the yarn department, so if you’re not sure about exactly which supplies to buy, we can get them during the class.

For more information on my teaching activities, go to fantasticmio.com/teach or click on “Teach” at the top of the page.

Here’s how I do it:

Start by bringing the yarn in front of the hook:

Then insert the hook into the next vertical bar (just as you would for the simple stitch):

With the thumb of your left hand, hold the working yarn down:

Yarn over by bringing the hook in front of the yarn, then under and behind it:

Start the pull through. When you get to this point, let go with your left thumb:

This part takes good timing. Let go too soon and it’s really hard to pull the hook through. Let go too late and you end up with a bigger loop on your hook than you intended, and it makes your gauge go all wacky.

Finish pulling through to add the loop to your hook:

This fabric was made by alternating two rows of Tunisian Simple Stitch and two rows of Tunisian Purl Stitch:

(You can learn how to do this in person on March 6th at the Michaels at Dixie Mall in Misissauga, Ontario. Click here for more info.)

The Crochet Cast-On is a knitting technique that we’re totally going to steal and use for our own purposes! Specifically, for use in Tunisian crochet and Crochet-on-the-Double. If you are a knitter, you may find this tutorial useful, too! Just substitute in your mind – replace “afghan hook” with “knitting needle” and you’re good to go.

In Tunisian and CotD, you typically start with a base chain, and then go and lift up a loop in each chain. As with regular crochet, though, starting with a base chain can cause problems – sometimes they’re too tight, they aren’t very stretchy, it’s a pain in the butt to work into them – and sometimes you just really want to extend a row out to the left of your work. For regular crochet, you can use Foundation Stitches to address all of these issues.

For Tunisian and CotD, you can use the crochet cast-on!

You need: an afghan hook (or double-ended hook… or knitting needle… depending on what craft you’re doing), a regular crochet hook in the same size (or a bit bigger), and your yarn.

In these pictures, my afghan hook is metal and 9mm, and my regular hook is bamboo and 10mm.

Start with a loose slip knot on the afghan hook. You would benefit by making the slip knot in the opposite way you might usually, and have the short tail be the one that makes the loop smaller when you pull on it.

Hold the afghan hook in your left hand, and the regular hook in your right hand. Insert the regular hook into the slip knot behind the afghan hook:

Working behind the afghan hook, chain 1:

Now move your regular hook to the front of the afghan hook with the yarn still behind it:

Yarn over:

Pull through the loop on the regular hook:

Now move the yarn back behind the afghan hook:

Put your regular hook in front of the afghan hook again, and repeat the process (yo, pull through, move yarn to back and hook to front) as many times as needed:

Stop one loop shy of what you need. Here is what the row of chains will look like:

Take the working loop and put it over the end of the afghan hook to form your last loop:

Go ahead and work the loops off as you normally would and now you’re good to go for your next row. One warning: the vertical bars don’t line up *quite* the same way as they do when lifting them up from a base chain (this becomes particularly apparent when doing Tunisian Knit Stitches), however, you can still do any stitch you want to do, you just need to be a little careful with it.

Some extra benefits I’ve discovered so far with this technique are:
- In crochet-on-the-double, it helps make a nearly-invisible seam when making a tube (such as with mio’s hat)

- When working with a fuzzy yarn, one that makes it difficult to see your stitches (such as a boucle), using this technique makes it a LOT easier to be sure you’re starting with the right number of stitches.

Charles: I could really go for a grilled cheese sandwich
Becky: There’s a place two doors down from Lettuce Knit that apparently has great grilled cheese sandwiches
Charles: You know, we really should go to Lettuce Knit!
Becky: Ok, but that’s where I got that skein of $39 yarn…
Charles: I seem to have suddenly developed a cheese allergy…

I was on team Central Purple. We started the day at the Yarn Boutique, near the corner of Bloor and Keele, where I bought this:

As well as some DPN’s. The plan is to make myself a pair of socks… because I’m some kind of crazy person (a crazy person with size 11 feet)! I’m going to try the simplest pattern I can find for my first pair.

Next stop: The Knit Cafe, which sells both yarn AND tasty treats. I had a lovely vegetarian quiche, and bought some lovely malabrigo:

I’m planning to make a hat out of it, but after winding the purple skein into a centre-pull ball, I’ve discovered that I am allergic to it after all. :( The hat will have to be for someone else, I guess. It’s a shame, because it’s just so very soft!

Then we headed to Romni Wools, which, if you look at a map of Toronto, it seems like it’d be easy to travel between the two shops, but due to streetcar re-routing, possibly due to protests, we ended up taking a scenic route down the street!

I found Romni quite overwhelming! It’s huge, and has every natural-fibre yarn you can think of (I assume… I don’t know of very many!). For someone like me, I’d have been better off deciding what I wanted to make and what yarn I’d need for it before heading in.

Still, I bought this:

I’m planning on playing with it to see if it’ll make a nice shawl. If it does, I’m going to go back and get more!

We then took another scenic streetcar ride up to Lettuce Knit where I simply could not resist buying this:

It’s soft, and even more beautiful than this picture would suggest. It is destined to become a scarf, which should be stunning with my black winter coat!

At the end of the shopping spree, most of us headed over to the Rivoli to meet up with the other four teams for merriment and prizes!

I won the “WTF WIP” prize my mitten, which I started when I got on the subway at Kipling Station. This is how much I got done over the course of the day:

Action shot:

The most frequently asked question I got about it all day was: how are you going to do the thumb? I love yarnies!

More in the next post about the amazing free stuff we got! (Look for that post either later today or tomorrow… my blog is being quite flakey today!)

I know there aren’t any “crochet police” so you can do whatever you want, but honestly, please feel free to actually *finish* a blanket. Any blanket.

I only bring this up because, despite the fact that you have more in-progress blankets than you can *find*, you still started two more in the last 3 days.

You know I still love you, regardless of what you do,
mio

Here’s a preview:

It looks very different from the blanket, mostly because I’ve gone up a hook size (from 5mm to 6mm) and down a yarn size (from 4 – worsted to 3 – light)

The right-hand increase side looks lovely

The left-hand increase side, less so:

I have an idea to sort that all out, though!

To make this, I used 2 balls of Bernat Handicrafter Cotton (MC=main colour, CC=contrasting colour), a 5mm (regular) hook, and a 6mm double-end hook.

With the 5mm hook and MC
ch3 (or ch1, then no-turn-chain-dc)
Rnd 1: work 11 dc into the first ch you made. Join. (12dc)
Rnd 2: ch3/no-turning-chain-dc, dc in same stitch. 2dc in each dc of previous round. Join (24dc)
Rnd 3: ch1, sc in same stitch. sc in next stitch. 2sc in next stitch. *sc in next two stitches, 2sc in next stitch* repeat until you reach the first sc you made. Join. (32 sc)

Remove 5mm hook, insert 6mm hook in loop (you might want to take the opportunity to weave in the starting ends shortly after you’ve made them)

Tunisian section:
lift up a loop in as many sc stitches as you can/want, starting with the stitch next to the one your loop is coming out of. Turn. Pull a loop of CC through the first loop of MC on the hook. Pull through 2 loops repeatedly until you have 2 or 3 MC loops and 1 CC loop on the hook. Turn. Lift more loops on MC up. Turn, and work them off with CC.

Continue in this fashion, working in a spiral, until you have the length you want. Work a round of sc for the last round, and join (try to hide the step created by working in a spiral previously!)

Weave in all ends.

Enjoy!