Motif of the Month March 2014 Starfish Granny Crochet Tutorial

Hey everyone, it's Deja from CrochetEverAfter.com. Today we're making this starfish granny pentagon. Can't call it a square. This is a pretty quick little motif that you can make in two different colors if you want to. Um, just grab the pattern from the link below and get your yarn and a hook. I'm using worsted weight and a 6mm J hook. If you want to copy the same size, it's up. So as my palm, you'll see the finished measurement on the pattern for this size. Um, and let's get started. Okay, so to get started on our starfish granny, we're going to put a slip knot on our hook. So just flip over your yarn and pull the working end through that loop. Pull it tight. Put it on your hook, and then we're going to make a ring, so we're going to chain four by yarning over, so when you yarn over, you always go back to front, my hook down to catch my yarn and pull it easily through the loop on my hook, and I'm going to do that four times. Yarn over, pull through, notice I always push my loop back to the shaft of my hook, that'll That'll keep all my chains the same size. So I pull through and I push back. We've got four times, and then I'm going to join my very first chain so that I can make a little loop. So I'm going to put my hook through any loop on my first chain. I usually just grab that back loop so that I can join it quickly, because it's going to be covered with my first round of work. So when you yarn over, when you're putting your hook through that chain, it's more of like a layover. It just kind of lays right over the top of your hook. You're not wrapping it a bunch or anything. Just lay it straight over, turn your hook and pull through, then pull through the loop on your hook, and now you have a ring. It's kind of hard to see, it looks like just kind of a jumble, but if you grab on both ends and pull it open you'll see the hole in the middle and that's where we're going to be working. So to begin the first round, what I'm going to do is I'm going to chain four, and that's going to count as a treble crochet. This is going to give me height so that all of my, or the next treble crochet is the correct height. If I just started treble crocheting right from my ring, the first one would be really squished down. So to do a treble crochet, always back to front, wrap your yarn around your hook twice. So yarn over two times. Then I'm going to put my hook through that hole, so remember, just pull it apart if you don't see it very well, because I'm working around the entire ring. So then again, my yarn over is more of a layover on this first one, it just kind of lays over the top, and I turn my hook to catch it, and I pull through that ring, and you'll see my ring is going to start to open up. Then, you notice that I'm keeping, I'm not pulling this all the way up. You can, but I find that if I keep all of my loops the same size as my shaft, all of my stitches will be the same size, so that's going to give me more consistent stitches. If you pull up while you make your stitches, you're going to have to pull up the same amount every single time, which can be a little difficult, which might give you inconsistent stitches. So I keep all of my loops the same size as my shaft, I'm going to yarn over back to front, Turn my hook down so it slides easily through my stitches, and I'm going to pull through just those first two loops. I'm going to repeat that two more times. I'm going to yarn over, turn my hook down, pull through the next two loops. You'll see I have two loops left on my hook. Yarn over and pull through those last two. So it's a treble because I'm doing three pull-throughs. I'm going to do another one of those. Back in the same ring, you'll see the hole has opened up a little bit more as I put more more trebles in and it'll keep getting bigger and bigger. So I yarn over, pull through the first two, and see I push my hook so that my loops rest on my shaft after every single pull through I do. I pull through and then I push, pull through, and push. That way I get all even stitches. Next I'm going to chain three as the pattern tells me. So I'm just going to one, yarn over, two, yarn over, and three. Now I have a repeat, so you'll see some brackets. What that means is I just repeat what's in the brackets over and over again as many times as it tells me to do it. So it's telling me treble three times in the ring and chain three four times. So that means I'm just repeating what I did here, except I'm actually doing three trebles, so I'm not doing that chain four. That's just to begin my round. So I go through the center, yarn over, pull through two, yarn over, pull through two. Yarn over, pull through two. Again, yarn over twice. Go back in that center ring, which you can see is nice and large now. Lay over my yarn, pull through the center. See how my loops are the same as my shaft? Yarn over, pull through the first two. Push to your shaft. Yarn over, pull through, push to your shaft. Yarn over and pull through. So I'm going to keep with this pattern to create five groups. Of these three treble crochets, which is going to give me the starfish because starfish have five arms, right? So I'm gonna chain three and that's the first pattern repeat done three trebles in the ring and chain three I'm going to do another set of three trebles. I'm going to repeat this pattern three more times So work around Do three more passes of this pattern and then I will meet you right at the join I'm doing my last chain three of round one, and I'm going to join up my round by slip stitching in the top of my chain four. So sometimes that very first chain can get a little squished down. So you can count one, two, three, four, or you can go to the right of that very first treble. So you see your first treble stitch, and then you have that chain right there. So you can do that as well instead of counting up. So I'm going to, and this time I'm going to grab two loops when I slip stitch. And the reason that I grab two loops, because usually I like to grab the back loop of everything, except for when I join. And the reason being is that you'll see that if I do a slip stitch with just one loop, it pulls on all the rest of the loops in my chain and creates kind of a big hole right there. But if I grab two loops, I'll just pull that back into shape, So if I grab two loops, which I'm going to grab the back loop and the bottom bump. See these little bumps here? That's my bottom bump of my chain. I'm going to grab both of those. You can see I have two loops on there now. When I grab that, I don't get that big gap. It doesn't pull on the rest of my chains. Now, what I'm going to do is I'm going to fasten off, because my next round, I need to start in one of my chain three spaces. So to fasten off, you can either pull your loop long and then pull your tail through, But I usually just... Do a chain and then I pull that really long. Pull it long enough that you can weave it in easily at the end. This is a good pattern if you want to make a two colored granny because you have to fasten off even though I'm going to make mine all out of orange. You can do two different colors because of that fasten off. You're gonna have to cut it anyway so you might as well make a new color if you want to try a two color granny starfish. But I'm going to go ahead and put another slip knot on my hook. And then what we're going to do is we're going to join with a double crochet. So normally when you join your round, or you join a new yarn, you would do so by doing a slip stitch. So you would slip stitch into your hook, pull that tight, and then you would chain three because we're doing double crochets for this round. And then you would start your very first double crochet. So that's kind of the normal way. But I'm going to show you a different way that you can join, where you're not going to use any chains. So all of your double crochets will look like double crochets, because chain 3s can sometimes look really skinny and not double crochet-ish at all. Crochet-ish, that's my new word. So instead, I'm going to start off with just a standing double crochet, is what it's called. So pretend like your yarn is attached to your motif already. Yarn over like you would for a double crochet, hold onto your tail, because if you don't it's just going to unwind itself. So hold onto your tail with your three fingers, three, not three, and yarn over. Then you're going to put your hook right through the big chain 3 space, as if you were about to work a stitch, which you are, but go ahead and hold onto that tail, put your hook through through the chain 3 and yarn over and pull up your loop. Then, you're just going to complete your double crochet. Yarn over, pull through the first two, yarn over, and pull through the second two. Notice I'm switching my hand, I'm grabbing my tail with my other hand now so I can pull through a little easier. And now, I have started my next round without any chain 3s, and my very first stitch is a double crochet. The tail is not really going to matter because you're still going to weave it in at the end, so whether it's up here or down here is not a big deal. Then, we're going to start our, I'm just going to move it over a little to the side because we're going to put more stuff in this chain 3 space. So now I'm going to do 2 more double crochets, then I'm going to chain 3 and do 3 double crochets, all in this space. So you're going to see little parentheses on the pattern, and that tells you everything that you're doing is going in one stitch or one space. So brackets mean repeat, and parentheses mean do all of that in one stitch, or one space. So I'm going to yarn over once for my double crochet, reach through the space, so it's nice and easy, you don't have to work into any stitches in this pattern really, you're working just into big rings and spaces the whole time. Then I'm going to yarn over, pull through the first two, yarn over, pull through the second two. Do that again, yarn over, reach through my big space, yarn over, pull through two, Yarn over, pull through two. Now I'm going to chain three just like I did in the previous round. And I'm going to do another three double crochets. If you're running out of space, just grab your bunch of double crochets and pull them over so you have more space. They will all fit. I'm going to do another double crochet. And you'll see I'm still keeping all of my loops the same size as my shaft. So when you do that, you're kind of working at like a 45 degree angle as you work your stitches off. You'll see that my hook goes kind of 40 degree angle-ish. Crochet-ish English. I've got lots of made-up words today. I'm doing my third. Now, in between working in these chain three spaces, I'm not going to do anything. I am going to start this very same pattern in this next chain three space. What I'm going to do is yarn over and just start my next double crochet. I'm not chaining at all in between. So again, I'm doing three double crochets. You'll see even without any chains or anything I still get a space because I'm skipping three stitches in between. Chain three. This is just a bunch of group of threes. So I'm doing this three more times because everything is in fives for this pattern. So I'm going to do these next three spaces and then we'll meet up over here to join up and finish off our granny. So keep working around. Alright, I'm on my last double crochet of the round. I did a big ol' gap right here, but when I join my round with the slip stitch, it's gonna look like all the rest. Remember, in between my trebles, I'm not doing anything. I'm just going straight to my next space. But since I've already finished this space, I'm just joining with a slip stitch. So I'm gonna do that by going into that very first double crochet. So if you're not sure where to place your hook when you're looking at that, Turn it sideways and look for your V. This one's a pull down. Your V, this very first V, is your very first double crochet. That's the top of your stitch. And you're just going to go under both of those loops. You just catch those top two loops, bring your yarn over the top, pull it through, and then pull it through that loop. I'm going to tighten this down so it doesn't pull away because all of the other spaces are pretty tight. So now I'm all done. I'm just going to fasten this off and pull through and then I'm going to grab a needle and show you how I weave in something that is so holy. I'm going to go grab a Um... yarn needle and I'll show you how to do that. I have my yarn needle and I'm ready to start weaving in my ends. So I'm going to start with the one that I just fastened off because sometimes fasten off can be a little bumpy and look strange. So I'm going to show you how to Kind of hide that a little bit better. So what you can do is go into the next stitch that you come to, so you see there's my fasten off, you pull it down as tight as you can, and then just go right through the middle of the next stitch. Pull that nice and tight and it kind of pulls that bump down into the next stitch so it's a lot less visible. Now because we have lots of holes, we need to stick to the thick parts of our stitches. So if we work down the center of our double crochets, shaky hands today, work right down the center until you get to like where all these stitch I'm trying to think of what I should call these, kind of the parts that go around the chain three of the round before. If you go through the center of those, and so I'm just running right through the center on the wrong side of my motif, it kind of helps to hide them, but you don't want to just work straight across and that's it. Go to where your stitches are thickest and try to go back and forth as much as you can. So get under a couple. One way, and then come back another way, so that it helps lock them in even better. So you'll see that I can take this thing all the way to the center of my motif, kind of work through. Having it all one color makes it a lot easier as well. If you do the two colors, keep each color in its own round. So keep all of whatever color you work this round in, in the same spot. Don't try to go through a different color, because it'll end up showing through eventually. This motif is cool because you can do a join as you go motif, which means that as you work these, you can bring, and you'll see I'm also going to pull on this as I do it so I don't have any ends that are really tight and slack. I want to keep them slack so that when I cut them they don't ricochet back out and stick out. So this is a join as you go. So when you're making these chain threes, you can actually do the chain three and join through other motifs. So you can join in all of these chain three spaces and you can make a shawl, a scarf, whatever you may want to make out of that. You can make a real open weave kind of pretty springy type garment, even a garment, tank top, shirt. As you work your stitches, you can join those up. So if you're familiar with joining as you go, this is a good one for it. So as you see, I'm just going to go through and weave in my ends for at least four inches. That way, if they start to stick out at any point in time, I can cut them off without worrying about not having any still in there. Because as you wear your stuff, you will get little ends popping out every once in a while. So I'm going to go back and forth. I'm going to do all four ends. You should have four, even if you changed colors. Look at the finished product. Okay, I got all my ends weaved in on my granny starfish, or starfish granny, and it's all ready to go. So remember, you can join these up. You can either do little joins in the corners, or join as you go, or even connect them as kind of a pentagon. You can pull them out so they're more pentagon-ish than starfish. But it kind of dips in the middle there because of the no chains right here. That's why I call it a starfish granny because I think it looks kind of like a starfish, but if you have any questions leave them below And thank you for watching