Practical Tips for How to Become a Better Crocheter | Podcast Episode #94

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Are you on a mission to get better at crocheting?

Practice may not always make perfect but in my experience, good practice always makes better. There are a few fundamentals that when you “get there”, everything else will fall into place. Do you know what they are?

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• About “A Year In Crochet” and how it will help you improve
• How the right hook makes all the difference
• About gauge and how to fix width and row issues
• How tension and the hook go hand in hand
• The importance of blocking

Special Guest

Today I had the pleasure of chatting with Lorene from Cre8tion Crochet. She is a wealth of knowledge and no stranger to finding ways to always get better. She’ll shed some light on those fundamentals today to help you on your journey to being a better crocheter.

Episode Transcript

Brittany:
Well, hello there and welcome to session number 94 of the BHooked podcast. Thank you so much for joining me today. We have a special guest for you today. I’m really excited about our chat.

And as you heard in the intro, there’s a giveaway today and I really want you to take advantage of this opportunity. Before we start though, let me ask you this. Have you found yourself frustrated because you feel like no matter how much you crochet, your projects just aren’t improving? Maybe you’ve hit a plateau.

I know I certainly did until I made a few realizations, sort of like aha moments that catapulted me sort of over that plateau phase and I started improving once again. If this is you, this episode is definitely for your ears.

Now, be sure to stay tuned until the end because there is a giveaway. I want to share those details with you at the end of the episode so they’re fresh in your mind. You can take action on them and you remember what to do. So we’ll talk about it a little bit during the show, but I will give you all of the details on how and what you will potentially win at the end of the show.

So today I’m joined by Lorene from Creation Crochet. It’s always such a pleasure to chat with her. She’s so much fun and I know you’re going to enjoy listening to what she has to say today. We had her back on in episode 42. We talked a lot about design inspiration.

But today we’re going to chat about how we can become a better crocheter. Now, Lorene does have a really great program. This is actually her second year that strives to help people improve their skills. And you’ll hear her talk a lot about that in the first part of the episode.

And here’s a little hint for you. This may have something to do with the giveaway. And then from there, we talk about some tactical strategies on how you can improve. And the aha moments for me were basically… in the realm of tension, engage, and even blocking to an extent. And we talk a lot about that.

Lorene is a wealth of knowledge. She’s been crocheting for so many years and she’s helped so many people get over that plateau and accomplish their goals. So I know she’s perfect for you to listen in on today.

Now before we get to it, I have to ask, have you tried Loop It Yarn by Red Heart yet? This is such a cool new concept. Just think, you can literally knit a blanket, or whatever you want, without needles. So cool. It’s a brand new approach to creating where you only need to use your fingers to create the stitches.

It’s a must try. And honestly, with the holidays coming up and your kids probably have some time off school, this would be a really great way to get them involved in what you love. Maybe you can have some stitch time together and you don’t have to go through the frustrations, perhaps, of teaching them how to knit or how to crochet.

Now you can find Loop It Yarns at Michael’s stores. I know here in my area, that’s where I have seen it the most. But of course, you can order directly from redheart.com.

All right. I don’t want to delay anymore. I know there are some real value bombs to be had in today’s show. So let’s listen in on my chat with Lorene.

Lorene, hi. Welcome back to the show.

Lorene: 4:16
Hi, it’s good to talk to you again.

Brittany: 4:18
Yeah, it’s such a pleasure. I know it’s been a long time coming. We’ve had you on almost a year ago where we had just a really great conversation. And I’m excited for what we’re going to chat about today. So how have you been doing? What have you been up to since then?

Lorene: 4:25
I’ve been doing a lot of, last year I think when we talked was when I was just about to launch my yearly membership, A Year in Crochet. So it was A Year in Crochet 2018. So I’ve been busy with that. In the last couple of months, I’ve been busy with getting A Year in Crochet 2019 ready. So it’s had a lot of improvements and changes. So that’s been very busy with getting that done.

I’ve been working on, I created a loyalty program for my followers that can go hand in hand with A Year in Crochet or it can be a separate, there’s different levels of membership. So it can be as much or as little as they want that to be. So I’ve been working on that. And of course, you know, all the backend stuff of preparing those things for the world. It’s a lot more than most people would probably even begin to think.

And then just sticking with patterns on my blog. I try to do a crochet along every month and working with Red Heart. So I’ve been, I guess, with Red Heart now for going on two and a half years, I guess, I think. Yeah.

Brittany: 5:24
Yeah.

Lorene: 5:25
So we’ve got all our new product launches and I do a crochet along with them probably about three or four times a year. And I manage all of their crochet alongs as well. So I do all the photography for them or I procure the photography. I do some of it myself, but most of it I do through a photographer. So busy, busy little…

Brittany: 5:45
Crochet bee. It sounds that way. There is a ton of work that goes into crocheting. What we do, really—creating content and crochet alongs and all that stuff. But it’s definitely a fun—it’s a fun way to go through life. It’s busy, but it’s—I couldn’t have it any other way.

Lorene: 6:03
Yeah. I definitely could not go back to working for the man. Yeah. You know, and most online people do a lot of behind-the-scenes work, but as crochet bloggers—and it’s the same with like food bloggers—we have the added pleasure of having to actually make the item we are blogging about.

So some people write about emotions or feelings or things that are in the world already. We have to make the thing to put the thing into the world. So I think—I don’t think people realize just how much it takes for just a single blog post.

Brittany: 6:42
Yeah. The amount of hours that goes into it is pretty crazy because—I mean, it depends on the person, right? I don’t really consider myself a fast crocheter. I do like to take my time. And there are plenty of people out there who are way faster than I am. But I would say an average project, like from start to finish, I’m putting probably close to 60 hours, sometimes even more into that because of that aspect of it, that you have to finish the thing before you can do anything else.

Lorene: 7:13
Well, then you have to stop and take photos as you’re making it, or you have to do a video, you know, and it’s just—write it down or rip it out 30 times and change the math. And the struggle is real, right? You know, and then there’s just so much—you mean, you know, there’s just so much behind it.

And then once you get it into the world and then you write about it, then you have to market that you wrote about it. And it’s just—social media ends up taking a huge portion. A bulk of my work is social media. I probably spend the least amount of time—in the grand scheme of what I’m doing—crocheting. So it’s probably—I only crochet probably 20% of my working time.

Brittany: 7:52
Yeah. And that makes sense because you put so much time into the thing that it’s a shame when you can’t like devote equally as much time into trying to get it in people’s hands.

Lorene: 8:07
Yeah. And you want to do that without being pushy or salesy. You know, I strive very hard to be genuine and authentic. And I really just—most of my work is—a great portion of my work is free. So I just try to make sure people get it, but you don’t want to be spammy or, you know, in a way that speaks to people. So there’s a lot of thought and effort behind that as well.

But like you said, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I enjoy the business aspects of it just as much as I do the crafting aspects of it.

Brittany: 8:41
Yeah, I agree 100%. It’s fun. It really is exhilarating. It’s really a great word that I can think of when I think about business and running everything. So I enjoy it. I know I definitely want to circle back around to some of those things that you’ve had going on—definitely A Year in Crochet. I’ll move off last year available too.

Lorene: 9:05
So I’ll talk first about my loyalty program, because that kind of ties both of them together. I have the Merino level, the Mohair level, and the Cashmere level. So they’re based—you know, I wanted to give them tiers that are based in the crochet world.

Brittany: 9:18
Yeah, that’s fun.

Lorene: 9:19
My favorite fibers and which ones were more luxe. So just the basic Merino, you just get 50% off every pattern I’ve ever created and every pattern I will ever create for the entire year that you’re a member. And they get a free pattern on their birthday.

And then for the Mohair, it gets those things, plus they get an e-book on their birthday, a free pattern when they sign up, and they get a 25% discount for next year’s A Year in Crochet.

And the Cashmere level—they get all of the things I previously discussed, plus they get 50% off A Year in Crochet next year and free access—free digital access—to last year’s membership. So that level is $157, and they end up getting free access to all 12 months of 2018. They’ll get 50% off of 2019. And they’ll get 50% off every pattern I’ve ever made or will for the year, plus their free e-book for their birthday and a free exclusive pattern when they sign up.

So… I’ll give you the links for that and everything, but it’s a really great way. I mean, if you do the Merino level, it’s $37 and it pays for itself after like five patterns. So a lot of my fans buy a couple of patterns a month. So for people like them, after two months or three months of patterns, the rest of the year, they get 50%. They’ll have paid for it all and get 50% off all of them from then on out.

Brittany: 10:51
Yeah, really cool.

Lorene: 10:52
Yeah, so people who, if they are interested, can still find A Year in Crochet 2018. I’ll give you the links, and they get all of those patterns. And some of them can be purchased à la carte in my Ravelry shop. And then they can sign up for next year too.

So we made a lot of changes between 2018 and 2019. And there are just so many more little pieces that are just going to make it such a fun membership. You know, when we get to that point, I can explain everything that we do in the membership and why it’s so fun.

Brittany: 11:30
Yeah. Well, since we’re on the topic now, let’s go ahead and chat a little bit about that before we talk about improving your skills and that sort of thing.

Lorene: 11:37
Well, that’s the basis kind of of The Year in Crochet. So the name came from, you know, a year in review. And just sitting one day and it just popped in my head and I thought, that’s a neat name. Now, what can I do to go with that name? Like, what kind of yearly—you know, people have year-long crochet alongs and they’re fun.

But they’re—in my mind as someone, not a designer, but just as a patron—I like to improve my skills. Like, I want to grow as a maker and learn new techniques and tips and tricks. So that’s a big component of what A Year in Crochet is.

So every pattern that I do basically has like a more of a beginner’s way of doing it and a more advanced way of doing the work. So everything is garments or wearables. Last year, I think I did maybe one or two things that weren’t, but people really enjoy the garments and the wearables.

So they come in sizes small through 5X. So it’s eight different sizes. So it is great for almost anybody. I want it to definitely be all inclusive. And that’s always been a big part of my designs in general is that I know the frustration of people not being able to find something they like in their size. So I make sure that I make my patterns all the way up to 5X so that anybody can wear them.

But say it’s a sweater—maybe if you’re a beginner, you might start by doing a chain. As a more advanced crocheter, I start all of my garments with foundation stitches. So I will write up the pattern with both directions. So, you know, we’ll say chain three or chain however many, or foundation double crochet however many. And then I include a video for that. So I include a video on how to do each of these steps. And we build on that throughout the year. And then we’ll do, you know, chainless starting double crochet instead of a chain three, but the pattern will still read chain three or, you know, the more advanced stitch. So people can do what they’re comfortable with.

Brittany: 13:47
Yeah.

Lorene: 13:48
Hopefully learn a little bit, a new trick every month. So, you know, they might not learn something every month, but pretty much every month they’re learning a new technique or a new, uh, trick or tip to doing something. And we build upon that.

And anytime I introduce a new skill, I do a video for it. Sometimes the patterns themselves have videos depending on how advanced they are. I think I’m gonna try to do a video for every pattern next year. I was able to secure some better filming equipment and everything this year. So I’m gonna try to take advantage of that.

And then I always have charts and schematics and things like that. Next year I’m incorporating—I’ve begun sketching everything—so I’m incorporating a black and white sketch so that they can color their sketches, their designs, they can pick out their color schemes ahead of time.

And part of the kit, part of the bonus is for the kits—colored pencils. So they’ll get everything they need for the entire year. And I’ll talk about the bonuses. That they can have an entire year of crochet and improving and expanding their skills. And at the end of that time, they’re left with 12 garments that they can either gift, you know, they can gift for Christmas for the following year, or they can keep them for themselves or, you know, whatever they want to do with them.

So—and they’re always there. So the patterns, we run them as a crochet along. Last year I just gave the pattern out and they could do it when they wanted to. This year we’re going to have two components. They can either download the entire pattern or we’re also going to do it in the group setting as an actual crochet along, where we’ll do each section section so we have some accountability for the membership.

But I think it’s, you know—I love when they make them during the month. And sometimes they’ll come in and say, “Oh, I had to miss this month for whatever reason,” and they show it because we have a Facebook group that’s just exclusive for people or for members of the community. And they all help each other and they’ve become very, very close.

I think part of the reason some people have purchased for next year already is just because they don’t want to lose that connection that they’ve made with these other crocheters who are all kind of learning the same skills along with them. And I have all different levels. I have beginners. I have people that have been crocheting, you know, as long as I’ve been alive or longer. So it’s a really great mix of people.

Brittany: 16:16
It’s such a great approach too. I love how you’re really focusing on the learning and the improving part of it because, I mean, that really drove this episode for me. That question comes up a lot in my inboxes. How do I get better? It sounds like this would be a pretty cool tool.

Lorene: 16:33
Yeah, and it’s been amazing to see the transformation of some of my beginners. You know, a lot of people never did gauge swatches before, you know, they had no idea or they didn’t know how to do it the right way or they just skipped it completely. And of course, they’d end up with garments that were too big or too small or whatnot.

But just teaching them, all right, we’re going to take it. You know, they think, oh, it’s such a waste of time to do that gauge swatch. But it’s a bigger waste of time to spend 20 hours making a sweater and then—this doesn’t fit you.

So yeah, we spent a lot of time on kind of like, all right, let’s come together and we’re going to do this the right way. And we’re going to—if you have any questions… and, you know, and sometimes mistakes had come up in the beginning of the patterns, you know, and they would find—sometimes they would find them or whatever, but it just became a really neat way of everyone kind of learning a lot.

Now I do have everything tech edited all beforehand, which has been something that—one thing that I kind of got away from with designing a little bit, because I’d done it so much that I kind of was like, “Oh, I know that’s right.” But yeah, little things. And there are some people in my group—the littlest little itty bitty teeny weeny thing—they catch it and it throws them for a loop.

So it’s important for some of them that even if it doesn’t make a difference—like in your foundation chain, you know, you chain two to begin for a half double crochet or a chain. Some people chain three. For me, I change it depending on if that chain two is going to be a stitch or not.

So all of my foundation stitches—they don’t start the same for every single pattern. It really depends on what the body of the pattern is going to be. So one of my followers, she’s like, “This is chain two, but last month it said chain three. So I don’t know what to do.”

It really won’t make a difference. Whatever you chain for—it doesn’t matter. But it’s funny. So I’ve learned to become—it’s taught me a lot too, with designing—to be much more regimented and much more strict in finding those little errors that really don’t make a difference, but change how people feel about a design.

Brittany: 18:50
Yeah. And I’m seeing a parallel here too. You’re really the driving force with helping these people improve their skills. And it sounds like they’re helping you a little bit too.

Lorene: 18:59
They are. They are. It’s helped a lot with my business, with the business aspect of things and thinking about how I can better serve my audience, which is—as I said, I’m constantly just in life, I strive to just be better. So I enjoy that.

And that’s part of—when I first did it last year, I thought, well, we’ll try it. We’ll see how it goes. You know, I didn’t think I was going to continue with it. But it’s the little couple—you know, anything you learn new, you always have some mistakes. They’re nothing huge. But as I went through, it taught me how to be better and some new things. And I put all that together and threw them all into this year.

You know, so we have—like I said—we have the sketches this year. I’m making sure that—excuse me—I design everything far more in advance than I had so I can give the people a full month before that month’s pattern to purchase their yarn.

So it was like I was giving, you know, maybe a couple days beforehand like, “Okay, well this is what the yarn you’re using for this month.” And sometimes it takes people a while to get it in. So now we’re going to have it set up where they’re going to know the first—every quarter—they’re going to know what they’re making so that they can, you know, if there’s a sale for yarn, they can stock up and they’ll have their supply list of what they’ll need a full month in advance of their pattern.

So we’ll be working on, say, this month’s cardigan, but we’ll have all the details for next month so that we can all be prepared. And I was able to secure an exclusive discount with Red Heart Yarns. So we have an exclusive discount that will only be for that month. They’ll have, I think, a two-month window where they will be able to purchase the yarn at a discount for that particular pattern.

And of course, with working with Furls, I was able to secure an exclusive discount for Furls. I use Furls hooks for all of my designing, and I tell them, you know, “This is the hook I used.” They’re free to use whatever hook they have, but a lot of them—because part of one of the physical bonuses for the membership—is a hook, a Furls hook.

Brittany: 21:20
Yeah.

Lorene: 21:22
And this year we did something special. We had it—it’s a custom exclusive hook, so you can only purchase it through me, through my membership. And it’s a different technique for coloring that we haven’t done before. So it’s actually dipped. It’s all made out of natural wood, but half of it is a bleached white wood and the other half is a color from my business.

And I had put out a little picture on my Facebook group probably about seven months ago and asked people to pick the color that they liked best. So we went with the number one winner and we had them specifically colored to that color dye. Furls won’t have that available anywhere and they are engraved with my business name.

Awesome commemorative hook for each Year in Crochet, each year. So of course they get that Furls hook in their hand and now they like Furls hooks. They learn how great they are ergonomically. But they will have an exclusive discount to be able to purchase Furls hooks and Furls products with the membership as well.

Brittany: 22:31
That’s awesome. It sounds like there are a lot of really great perks for it too. So if somebody is interested in getting in on that for next year, what do they need to do?

Lorene: 22:42
All they need to do is they can just, um, read about it. Like I said, I recommend purchasing it through the loyalty program because you get 50% off. It’s $116 for the year, which ends up being a little less than $10 a month, which definitely financially covers.

I was able to secure better pricing on all of the items that are included in it. And then they end up getting the patterns at a hugely discounted rate. So they spend $10 a month. And I have to figure out the payment—I’m right in the process right now. I’m trying to do quarterly payments—quarterly payment plan. But I think I might only be able to set it up as a monthly payment plan, which is what we did last year.

So they just either do the monthly or quarterly plan, whatever way we figure out. Or they can pay up front for the year, which is the least expensive way to do it. There is like a little bit of a surcharge to split it up into payments.

Brittany: 23:35
Yeah.

Lorene: 23:37
But if they join the loyalty program, then they get automatic 50% off all of my patterns—other, you know, 300 patterns I have on Ravelry, or I don’t even know how many. Plus they get, you know, all those little bonuses. And then they get 50% off A Year in Crochet. So instead of being $116, it will be—I’m really bad with math—simple math. It’ll be $58 for the year.

And they get the free access to last year’s patterns as well. So this year we’re doing a project bag. And I really like this project bag because it zippers closed and it has a little pocket in the front, and it has little pockets—they can put their hook and their pens—and it’s got like a little water bottle pocket on the side.

It’s a really awesome bag and it’s like a nice canvas bag. Like it’s a pretty good quality bag. And it’s like a hot pink or pink, like my business color pink and black.

We did a binder that’s divided by—and it’s got 12 dividers in it. So every month they can print out their pattern and put it in the binder. And they even get like a three-hole punch in the binder. And then inside the binder, there’s a bag with pencils and pen and a ruler and a tape measure and the colored pencils and all of that.

So it is all-inclusive. It has everything they need for the year, except the yarn.

Brittany: 24:57
Yeah.

Lorene: 24:58
It gets hard sending yarn every month to—you know, there’s only 250 of them. Last year, we sold a little less than that physically. And then I did a whole bunch of digital ones. So I maxed it out at 250.

Brittany: 25:13
For this or for last year?

Lorene: 25:15
For this year, for coming up for 2019. Okay.

Brittany: 25:19
So there is some urgency to this too. It will kind of close after so long, after you get that 250.

Lorene: 25:26
Yeah, I expect it to go. I can sell, I’ll sell digital only memberships for a different price. It won’t be the full 116. I haven’t figured out the pricing on that yet. Last year it was $96 to join, but it had, you know, less bonuses and stuff. And it was $60 for digital only.

So it’ll be, you know, somewhere probably around 70 or $80 for digital only. So they can still get the patterns, but those bonuses—like I said, they can’t get that hook anyplace else. And then just the cost of what they’re getting these bonuses for is, of course, a lot less than they would be able to purchase them on their own.

I think I’m missing some. Oh, the first 50 people who order as well—we have some extra stitch markers. I have like a row counter and a pair of scissors, you know, a couple of little cute little bonus things for the first 50 people who order. And that’s getting close to being—you know, a lot of my people from last year have already pre-purchased for next year by purchasing the loyalty program.

So yeah, I haven’t actually launched it for sale yet. I planned—we’ll get into the health stuff in a little while—but it prevented me from launching it when I wanted to. I wanted to do a hard launch on the 15th of November. I think it will probably—well, by the time they’re hearing this, it will just be launching. So it’s going to launch like mid-December to mid-December.

Brittany: 26:55
So if you’re hearing this right as it airs, then just pay close attention to the end of the episode here and definitely check out the show notes. I’ll have everything linked there.

Lorene: 27:05
I always tell people too, when they kind of start to follow me, either join my Facebook group or the best thing to do is to get on my email list. I send out an email every week. I don’t spam you with things. It’s always, you know, some free patterns or information, but you’ll see the information as it becomes available, or when it’s coming out, you’ll have like advanced notice of when everything is coming out.

The first year when I did this, I didn’t really advertise it that much. I kind of just talked about it in my small Facebook group. I didn’t place any ads. I did a little bit of blogger outreach, you know, where some of my friend bloggers talked about it, but we really didn’t advertise because I didn’t know—I didn’t want to make it too big. I didn’t know what it was going to be like. I didn’t want to put too much work on myself.

But this year we’re definitely going to be doing that. So what I can do is—well, I’m going to be giving one away. So first, we’re going to—people, you always do a little giveaway for people listening on your podcast. So we are going to give that full membership away, bonuses included. And then I’m also gonna do—usually you do one afterwards, correct? For people who are catching it later.

Brittany: 28:22
Yeah, I think the way we did it last time was we just let the giveaway go for a little bit longer and we had them leave a comment on the show notes page. So what I’ll do is I’ll have the information for that at the end of the episode.

For now, I’d really like to shift things in the direction of just improving your skills. I know this is something that you have a lot of experience with. You’ve been crocheting for so long. I’m sure you’ve had a lot of trial and errors and I’m curious if you have any big tips for us here that somebody can try today and maybe see some results.

Lorene: 29:00
The things that have improved my skills the most—tension has been one of the absolute biggest ones for me. But doing the more advanced beginning stitches, so doing the foundation stitches—so if crocheters out there are starting their patterns with chains, I highly recommend learning the foundation single crochet, foundation half double crochet, foundation double crochet, and really getting those down.

And a lot of times people are so intimidated. I know when I first learned, I was. I was like, “Oh, this is weird. I’m never going to get this.” But as soon as it clicked in my mind why it was done the way it was, and how the stitches were made—how the chain and the stitch were made at the same time—once I learned that, it opened up a whole new world of being able to design garments that fit better.

Because you don’t have that tight chain around the neck that—you know, you have to make the neck large. You can make a small, fitted chain—neck or wrists or something like that—and it has a lot of give and a lot of stretch to it. So I definitely recommend learning them.

And there are free resources. I have some resources on my blog. There are paid classes through Craftsy. There’s a lot of different places. And everybody learns from someone differently or learns in a different way.

So I also have a picture tutorial on how to do it. And I’ve had some people say to me that watching videos didn’t help for them, but having a picture tutorial did, because they could stop and hold what they’re doing up against the picture and really make sure they’re getting that right.

Because there’s really only three steps to it that you have to just continue to repeat for the entire length of that chain. But it makes a huge difference. And you’ll probably never go back to doing it the chain way.

And I was even reading a comment on a thread, and someone had said, “Oh, you know, leave me your crochet tricks.” And somebody answered, “Oh, when I’m doing a sweater and I separate from the body and the sleeves, and if the pattern says chain three, I just do foundation stitches because it fits better and I can work into it from both directions.”

So if you are someone who’s made like a raglan top-down sweater, you can work into that chain really easily from one direction. But then when you try to go across the other direction, you only have one loop to go under, and it stretches or you can’t figure out what’s the stitch and what’s the chain—it just makes it difficult.

Where with a foundation stitch, it’s just another—you’re not crocheting into a chain, you’re crocheting into another stitch. So it definitely makes everything look better and fit better and just generally is probably my favorite thing ever.

Brittany: 31:44
Okay. I was just going to ask about the tension too. You mentioned that really briefly. Do you have any tips on how somebody can improve that? Is it just something that you need to practice with, or is there something specific?

Lorene: 31:57
There’s a little bit of both, I think. Of course, any component of learning a new skill—you need practice. But it’s not “practice makes perfect,” it’s “good practice makes perfect.” So if you’re practicing it doing it wrong, you’re never going to get any better.

My favorite trick for tension—of course, and this is going to sound biased—but this was ever before I worked for Furls. It’s one of the reasons I began working for Furls, is to make sure you are working with an ergonomic hook or a hook that you’re very comfortable with.

So a lot of people are using the aluminum—either the Bates or the Boye hooks—but there are lots of different ergonomic options. There’s polymer clay that people make—indie designers make their own hooks that are polymer clay around a steel hook or aluminum hook. And then you have the tulips, like the Clover Soft Touch and the Clover Amours. They’re not necessarily ergonomic, but they are easier to work with. They’re flat, there’s a place you can place your thumb. They don’t roll in your hand as much.

And of course, you know, the Furls hooks, which were designed specifically to fit into the joints of your hands, the hand space, in a specific way. So if you’re holding your hook tight—which you usually have to do with the little inexpensive aluminum or steel hooks—you’re going to crochet tight.

So the first thing in my mind, if I’m trying to teach someone how to crochet and how to have good tension, is to make sure that you don’t have unnecessary tension in your own wrists. And you can stop and do wrist exercises as well.

I find since I’ve been using ergonomic hooks, I don’t have pain in my wrists anymore, and I can hold my hook fairly loose. Like if you come behind me when I’m crocheting, you could pull the tail end right out of my hands and it would slip right through.

And then how I hold my yarn. So I run it—maybe I’ll send you a picture. Everybody does it differently, but for me, it works well to go under my pinky—I have to get a piece of yarn to even see if I’m doing it the right way.

Brittany: 34:05
Yeah, I sort of like loop it around my pinky, underneath my ring and middle finger, and then it goes over top of my index finger.

Lorene: 34:15
I lay my non-dominant hand flat and I put the yarn on top of my fingers. It’s above my pinky, under my ring and middle finger, and above my index finger. And then I just place my thumb on top of my index finger where the yarn comes through.

But if you come—again—if you come behind me and pull the tail end of my yarn, you can just glide it through my fingers. I don’t hold my hand tight. And this really affects gauge.

So, you know, I have people write to me and say, “I just can’t get—I can get width gauge, but I can’t get height gauge,” or “I went up four hook sizes and I still can’t match your gauge.” Because my tension’s loose. My yarn is never stretched. It’s just at its natural state. And that really affects the way things look.

So I can see pieces people have made—like the sweater that we just did for last month’s crochet-along—a lot of people have made it. And I can see when people have tight tension because there’s so much more holes. It looks like the yarn they used was too thin or the hook they used was too large.

I like to use a larger hook than what the yarn calls for, typically, because I like my items to have a lot of drape. And I like that air space in there. But I don’t want that air space to be air. I want it to be filled with yarn. I don’t want it to look over spaced-out. So the tension really plays a huge part in that.

So just don’t hold your dominant hand—your hook hand—tight. Don’t hold tension in your hand. And of course, when you have tension in your hand, you have tension in your entire body. And it’s uneven tension. Maybe you get a little angrier, or you hold it tighter for a specific time, and it’s not even throughout.

So when you have good tension, you don’t want your yarn to be stretched. You don’t want it to be loose. You want it to be taut. You don’t want it to have loops as it’s sliding through your fingers, but you don’t want it to start to stretch out either. And you just want to make sure that it’s even.

So there are two components to tension, and they’re the two things. So just work on that. And even if you work on just holding your hook in your hand loosely and start with that, you know—work on one thing at a time. Maybe switch to a hook that’s more comfortable. Play around with different hooks.

Before I found Furls, I really liked the Clover Amours—the gold Clover Amours—because they had that little flat space to hold your thumb. And that worked for me. And of course, different people have different holds. So different hooks are going to work better for different people.

And even in Furls, we have two different styles of hooks because some work better for some people and some work better for others. So experiment with them and find a hook that is comfortable to you and that you don’t have to grip hard.

And then just work on that aspect. And then maybe start to incorporate the way the yarn is coming together through your fingers. And then after you’ve mastered those two things, start to work on being consistent throughout your piece of work.

And if people aren’t sure if they have good tension, then I recommend that they sit down and try different things. Try holding it tight. Try doing it as they would normally do it. And try holding things looser. And then put those gauge swatches together and they can really see which provides a better result for them and see why it is so important to work on.

Brittany: 37:41
Yeah, a moment ago you mentioned something that I want to dig into a little bit because I don’t think it’s something that you would hear unless you’re just really into making garments. You said the gauge width and the gauge height. A lot of people talk about the gauge width because that’s sort of like the space difference between the stitches or it’s basically how many stitches in that inch.

Lorene: 38:05
How it’s going to fit around your bust, you know, how it’s going to fit there.

Brittany: 38:08
Yeah. But then the row, the gauge height, that has to do with the row. And for that one, that seems a lot harder for somebody to adjust. So do you have any tips for that? I mean, is it changing the hook? Is it changing how you’re finishing off that stitch? So maybe it’s not quite as stretched out?

Lorene: 38:26
Yeah, I do have a couple tricks for that because one of my testers specifically has a problem with meeting my row gauge. So we worked on a lot of things. There’s two different things.

So when you’re crocheting, I make sure I do it this way and this goes back to tension a bit as well. When you’re making your stitch and you’re finishing that final yarn over for the stitch, pay attention to how you’re holding your hook.

So I make sure my hook is perpendicular to my work. It’s straight across—the space in between the hook and my piece of work is exactly the same. But a lot of people hold it, their hook point down. So the hook is close to the fabric. There’s not that space in there.

And then when they do that yarn over, they’re actually shrinking their stitch. So they’re causing their stitch to be shorter than it should be. And if they work that way, it doesn’t really look bad. But if you are following the gauge of someone who doesn’t do that, then it’s not going to be the same.

So I don’t pull up my hook. I don’t unnaturally pull the stitch higher than it should be. But as I’m saying, I guess I lift up my hook so that that space remains the same all the way through. And I’ve always done it that way. It wasn’t something that I had to learn.

Tension’s probably been the one thing that I’ve always been pretty good at, even when I first started. But I’ve worked with a lot of people, so I’ve figured out ways to help other people do it.

But I always make sure that my hook just lines up straight with my stitches, that I’m not holding the tip of it up further or down further. So every stitch, I just make sure that we’re even. But some people either can’t do that or consistently it’s difficult for them because they’ve been doing it the other way for so long.

So I have people do extended stitches. And basically all that does is add an extra yarn over and pull through of one loop. So if you’re doing a single crochet, you would insert your hook, yarn over, pull through the stitch, yarn over and pull through two loops on the hook.

Where with an extended single crochet, you’re going to—sorry, you don’t even yarn over—insert your hook in the stitch, yarn over, pull through. You’ve got your two loops on your hook. You yarn over and pull through one loop and then yarn over and pull through two loops.

So it gives just a little bit more height to the stitch, but it still looks close enough to the stitch. So it’s not like it wouldn’t be the same as jumping between a single to a half double. It just gives like a half of a stitch in between there and should make people’s row gauge match up.

And on the other hand, people who don’t point their hook down—they point their hook up and unnaturally pull the stitch up too far and then they just want to do the same thing where they make sure that their hook is perpendicular with the work as they’re working it.

Brittany: 41:24
Yeah.

Lorene: 41:25
So there are different ways that you can change your row gauge because if you change your hook size you are more than likely also going to affect your width gauge and it’s important to do both.

So of course for fit, you would automatically think that your stitch gauge is going to be more important because as I said, that’s kind of in a traditional sweater, what’s gonna fit around your bust or your waist or any of those things. And you don’t want it to be too tight.

But row gauge is very important, not only for the length of something, but for the underarm depth of something. So you don’t want it to be either too tight under your arm, which is very uncomfortable and makes you not want to wear it.

Or, you know, conversely, you don’t want it to be too loose under your arm, especially if it’s like something like a tank top, you know, where there’s no sleeves that kind of cover that.

It’s very important to match your gauge with the designer’s gauge. And to practice, you might have to adjust the way you do your stitches for that particular pattern.

Brittany: 42:25
How close do you think somebody’s gauge needs to be? Like, are we thinking… Yeah, that was actually what I was going to say—

Lorene: 42:32
Next. So gauge swatches are typically, most people measure them in four-inch increments. And I have something for skill set that we can talk about after this, as opposed to working with gauge as well.

But most people do four-inch dimensions and that’s because the larger area you have, you’re going to have a more accurate count.

Now I’ve had people say, “Well, I’m only off a stitch or even half a stitch,” but they have to realize that if they’re off one stitch in four inches—and the smallest bust size on a woman, say, we’ll say 32 inches for an extra small, like the smallest bust size there is.

So that’s eight sections of four inches. So that adds eight extra stitches to your pattern.

Those eight extra stitches are two whole—it could be two whole gauge, you know, one whole gauge section. It could be an entire four inches difference depending on the garment.

So you need to be pretty much on the nose. And you can be slightly off.

And one thing that people tend to forget when they measure gauge is to count that airspace. So you have your stitch and an airspace, and then you have a stitch and an airspace.

And people tend to measure stitch to stitch, not counting the airspace after that.

So it’s very important when you measure gauge that you measure from the beginning of one stitch to the beginning of the stitch, that you’re not counting—or to the, you know, including the airspace after the stitch you are counting.

So if you’re measuring eight stitches, you want to count eight stitches and that airspace and end it right before the next stitch begins so that you’re accurate.

Because part of measuring gauge is not just doing your swatch, but making sure that you’re measuring that swatch accurately.

Or some people do a pin—will place a pin, straight pin inside the center of stitches and measure pin to pin. So they’re measuring center to center of a stitch, which works just as well because it is including all of the air space in between.

And your rows, you want to make sure that you’re not counting that, you’re counting the actual entire bit of the stitch, the height of the stitch.

And I highly recommend when people do gauge swatches, not to just make four-inch squares and measure them because, you know, edges lie.

So the first couple of stitches on the end of the gauge swatch are different than the inside of the gauge swatch, and the row height are affected.

So if you are doing a four-inch gauge swatch, I make sure I tell my people to make a six-inch square and measure internally their rows and stitches inside that six inches—not including their edges—so that they’re getting as accurate of a number as possible.

Yes, depending on the pattern row height, you can maybe be a quarter of a row difference, but it really depends on the pattern.

So I am—I always say, and I try to make it—you know, the best patterns provide you all of this information.

They give you a schematic with measurements or even if they don’t give you an actual schematic, it gives you all of the measurements you need.

So it gives you the measurement of the underarm depth and it gives you the measurement of the height and where the neckline, you know, how wide the neckline is going to be and where that’s going to sit on the body so that you can make the determination that, all right, well, in my underarm height is seven inches—in that pattern the underarm depth is eight inches. My gauge is a little off. I’ll be fine. It will still fit me.

Because some people like the—they make the underarm real close and tight to the natural underarm. And some people, depending on the garment or the style, will have it much lower.

So it’s important to have all of the information and then you can make the determination.

And one of my biggest things is people say, “Well, I wear a size small in the store. What size should I make?”

So there’s a schematic, has measurements on it. Measure yourself and measure it to the schematic.

Maybe you want that sweater to fit you more tight or maybe you want it to be real loose.

You can determine if you want to go up a hook size, you know, up or down. And that can also help with people when they buy yarn.

Maybe they have the patterns written in bulky weight yarn, but they have a worsted that they really like.

Instead of ingesting the entire pattern, sometimes you can go up a size and you can base that on your gauge swatch.

It gets a little advanced, but people even just basically speaking can see that, “Oh, I’m a 32-inch bust. That pattern is a 37-inch bust. It will fit me if I make it with a little bit of a thinner yarn because my gauge is close enough that maybe that one stitch is not going to make a difference in the overall size.”

Or they could just go up a size in the pattern.

Yeah. So the things that people keep doing—they’re just important parts. If you really want to improve your skills and improve your craft, you have to do the kind of basic, boring, nitty-gritty work.

Brittany: 47:42
Right. It’s so easy to skip this step, too. And the last thing I want to talk about really quick, because I think it plays a big role in all of this, is blocking. What do you have to say about blocking and having that help improve your gauge swatch and just your overall project?

Lorene: 47:57
I remember when I first started crocheting, designing, I didn’t block anything. And in my mind—and I realize now that it was a ridiculous thing to think—I remember saying to one of my fellow designers, I think maybe people who have to block their work just are not crocheting the right way. They’re just crocheting too tight.

And in some cases that can kind of actually be somewhat true. I would say if you just have good tension and if you just have consistent tension, you shouldn’t have to block anything.

Brittany: 48:27
Yeah.

Lorene: 48:28
With certain things that is in some ways true, of course, lace work and things like that, you have to block it. There’s no getting away from that. But I have become a big believer in blocking my work. Not because I need to change how the shape of something is. And it can. I mean, blocking can help with those things.

If you’ve made something and you haven’t had consistent tension or your tension’s been too tight, it can help kind of hide or fix some of those things. But it’s just the treatment of the fabric. So you have to think of what you crochet as you’re making a piece of fabric.

And, you know, when you bring clothes home from the store, you wash them before you wear them. So there’s like a lot of different factors, just getting the oil off your hands and from your hands off your garment, but it just softens the yarn, you know, especially like you don’t have to block acrylic because it doesn’t really hold a block.

You know, it doesn’t, it’s not like a wool where you can stretch it, manipulate it, into a different shape. And when it dries, it will stay that way. You know, it will revert basically very similar to what it started off as, but it’s still, um, just like I said, it just provides a little bit of drape and it just kind of softens, softens the work.

So it’s another step that people, they don’t want to have to do it. They want to put it on or give it away or sell it. But I think, um, I block probably 70% of my work. Um, the sweaters that I make with like real nice acrylic, I don’t block. But I do recommend that my followers, if they did not use like a real good tension, to go ahead and block them.

But there’s some things that I don’t block. It looks like they’re blocked because of the way I crochet. But when people make them, I tell them they have to block them because they’re not probably going to get the same result if they don’t.

Brittany: 50:25
Yeah. And I want to highlight something you said there too, because I know a lot of people may, and myself included, now I’m opening my eyes to this a lot more, but really in the last probably three or four years, I always stayed away from crocheting garments. And that was because I knew I wouldn’t wear them because I didn’t like the drape of it.

And I thought that it was really because, well, I’m either using the wrong yarn or I’m—It’s just the stitches are thicker, so it looks thicker. And when you block, I feel like you can get around a lot of those issues. And so since I started blocking and learning how important that is for your projects, I wear garments a lot more that are crocheted.

Lorene: 51:09
Yeah, there’s definitely a big difference, even between hand knit and store knit, but generally between crochet and knit with garments because crochet or knit is—and you knit as well, so you have that extra added bias of really knowing the difference in the fabric—is that they’re flat.

The stitches are flat. They’re stacked in such a way that there’s not a lot of bulk. Where with crochet, it’s not. There’s a piece of yarn on top of a piece of yarn for every stitch. It’s like a front and a back. And it does just become bulkier.

And there’s a lot of things you can do even in crocheting garments to minimize that. I said, I like to use a larger hook than what the yarn recommends. I usually am at least one hook size larger. I’ve been up to four hook sizes larger.

Again, you want to make sure you’re not stretching your yarn so that you don’t have like abnormal air spaces, but that affects the drape. And then especially when you go and block that work and it flattens out a little bit and smooths out the fibers—and how you block of course is important: you know, wet blocking, steam blocking, uh, you know, killing the fiber.

Sounds a lot worse than it is for people who are listening and don’t know what that means. Um, there’s lots of different ways you can block your work and it’s just amazing how different the yarn becomes once you block it, especially if you’re using a blocking solution that kind of helps soften that.

Brittany: 52:45
Yeah. Well, we’ve have so many good takeaways here. I know on behalf of everybody listening, I want to say a big thanks. I mean, not only for offering a giveaway, which we’ll talk about here in a little bit, but for all the tips for gauging and improving your skills there, that’s one area that I know there are so many people who are really striving to be better at.

And I think with what you’ve offered here in the episode and with your program, A Year in Crochet, it sounds like a pretty great combination to improve your skills.

For just a reminder, I’ll have the link to where you can check out the Year in Crochet and your loyalty program. I’ll have all that linked in the show notes.

But for somebody who wants to just connect with you and see what you have going on outside of that, where’s the best place for them to go?

Lorene: 53:35
My Facebook page, it’s not the best place to be. My Facebook group, it’s called Creation Crocheters Unite, and I’ll give you the link for that, is my free group on Facebook where we do, we talk a lot.

So I get in one-on-one and I answer questions for my followers and they really kind of all help each other. So that’s a great community to be in.

And it’s still, you know, it’s small. It’s only just about 10,000 people right now. So it’s big enough that you’ve got a lot of voices. There’s always somebody active in the group, but it’s small enough to where the people who are active participants of the group really kind of get to know each other and help each other out.

You can follow me on—I mean, I’m on Twitter, I’m on Instagram, I’m on all of these things—but if you really want to have access to, to be able to like ask me questions and things, it’s that.

And then of course my newsletter is where you’re going to find all of the information of what’s going on and where you can find things.

And every time I release a new pattern or do a crochet along or anything like that, I send it out in an email every week.

And the people who are on my Facebook group—or sorry, in my group email list—get exclusive discounts, so they’ll get discounts to new releases on patterns, or they’ll be the first to know about something that is a limited time offer, or there’s only a certain amount to go around.

So I definitely recommend that being on my email list is the best place to get everything.

And people write me and people respond to my newsletters and I write them back all of the time. So now you have my email address. You can respond to a newsletter if you have a question with any pattern or you’re missing something or whatever that is. I check those return emails.

Brittany: 55:18
Awesome. Okay. Well, I definitely encourage people to check you out in those places. I’ll have them in the show notes as well. Thank you so much. It’s been such a pleasure chatting with you today.

All right, I hope you enjoyed that episode with Lorene from Creation Crochet and that you took at least one little tip away that you can try today to see results, whether that be adjusting your tension like she was suggesting, trying a new hook, because I know that was a real big deal for me as well.

I used to use just the plain Boye steel and aluminum crochet hooks. And don’t get me wrong, they’re great hooks and a lot of people use them. But for me, when I made that transition to, I actually went to Clover Amore first, followed by my Tulips.

That was really when my tension changed. I could see a better consistency. It wasn’t that I’m using a better hook or that Tulip is a better hook than the Boye hooks. It’s that it was the better hook for me.

So that’s really important. Whatever it may be, whatever your takeaway is, I hope that you’ll try something today and see some real results.

All right, that’ll do it for today, my friend. Thank you once again.