Beginning Rows Without Chain Stitches

Being as heavy into crafts as I am, I have my email box loaded with mostly craft related. Some of my email is from sites that I like to visit frequently and those that I wish that I had time for, but can only visit on rare occasions. Regardless of the frequency of which I get to visit these sites, one is no more valuable than the other. They’re just valuable in different ways.

Yesterday, I received an email from one such site. Although, this crocheter is not to the level of crochet of which I crochet or design, I find that she not only gives me ideas for things to design, but she’s very good at giving her readers information on how to work up different patterns. Yesterday, I was at her site and I was floored. I actually received an education from her. In all my 46+ years of crocheting and teaching crochet I’d never heard of the trick for doing a stitch, which requires a yarn over (such as half double crochet, dc, treble/triple crochet, double treble/triple crochet, etc), at the beginning of the row without chaining. Here, I’d been spending my crochet life with trying to determine if a chain 2 or chain 3 does best in height for my dc. Usually, neither was the right height and I finally learned to loosely chain 2, but a regular chain 3 was too tall.

Well, I’m here to tell you-fellow crocheters-I’ll never worry about that problem again. And, when working with round rows (not referring to ‘working in the round’), I do believe that even I will have difficulty finding the beginning stitch in my own work; especially since I generally work the beginning end in (which is one way to keep track of where your round began) as I go.

First, I’d like to share my friends URL. Rachel’s site can be found at http://www.crochetspot.com. This is one of the few sites that I’ve suggested to my readers.


I can think of a few different benefits from using this technique. Below are a few reasons that I feel you’ll want to check out and start working on this method for yourself.
1. No unsightly, tell-tail seems in anything worked in the round.
2. Outer edges of flat items will no longer ‘bubble’ due to un-uniform heights of end stitch; compared to those worked in the middle of the rows.
3. Every stitch of the row will look the same; whereas with chaining on the end of rows and rounds, the chains-although not extremely obvious-are noted to be different than the others and non-crocheters may look at our work and wonder if we simply didn’t know how to start the row with the same stitch as the others in the article.

Well, I for one, will not have people asking me that question. In fact, there’s a good chance that other crocheters, with quite a bit of experience behind them, may look at my work and wonder what it is that’s different; while it’s actually the same. If you haven’t tried this wonderful technique, I suggest that you get out your favorite hook and some spare yarn and give it a whirl. I know that I know I’m going to be loving it.