Top Tips I Wish I Knew as a Beginner Crocheter (Part 1)

There are several things I wish I knew as a beginner crocheter 32 years ago. It would have made my experience so much easier. But hindsight is 20/20, and now I know better.

In this 2-part series, I’m sharing my top 10 beginner crocheter tips. I want to make sure your child doesn’t make the same mistakes I did, and save them so much time and wasted energy.

Let’s get started with the first 5 tips!

1. It’s okay to make mistakes and frog your work (a lot).

This can be a hard lesson for all crocheters to learn. Making mistakes is a daily part of enjoying this incredible hobby. I am always taking my crochet projects apart. My students are always surprised when I finish a project all the way through to completion.

Maybe your child doesn’t like a crochet project they are making. Or they are making some errors while practicing stitches. So, they decide to take out their work. That’s actually amazing! They are progressing as a crocheter, and that’s the important part.

2. Choose the right yarn from the start.

If your child wants to successfully learn to crochet, don’t buy them the super fluffy yarn that all kids love to use to make cute stuffed animals. All that extra fluff means that the stitches are harder to see, the yarn is more challenging to use, and the fluffs can fall off of the yarn. On the other hand, you don’t want to use very thin yarn either. It is hard to see progress and requires more patience, hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills to use effectively. Even I struggle with it sometimes.

Instead, go with medium thickness #4 weight yarn. Not too thick, not too thin. Avoid those fluffy yarns. Also, choose a light-coloured yarn, like white, light blue, green, purple or pink. Avoid black as much as possible. The dark colours are very hard to see, especially at night. Check out this article here for more info on choosing yarn for beginner crocheters.

3. Learn the basic stitches first, before learning the fancy stitches.

If your child is anything like the 250 kids I’ve taught to crochet in the last 2+ years, they will want to start learning to make stuffed animals as soon as possible. You might even be tempted to buy your child a crochet kit to make their first stuffie. Please don’t do that until they are actually ready. If they are just starting to learn to crochet, they aren’t ready for it.

There are a few crochet stitches that are used most commonly, those being the chain, single crochet, double crochet, and slip stitches. These are the 4 most basic stitches your child will need to learn and practice before learning the more complex stitches and patterns. Once they have those 4 stitches under their belt, they can make the stuffed animals, granny squares, or anything else they want!

4. Practice your stitches with real crochet projects.

This is the exact opposite way of learning to crochet that I used when I was just starting out as a crocheter, 32 years ago. I would start by making a very long chain, then practice a couple rows of whatever stitch I was learning at the time. When I was done or bored, I’d rip it all out (it’s called frogging) and try again. For most kids that would be very discouraging and demotivating. You don’t end up with anything to show for your couple hours of work.

This is why I teach kids to crochet differently. Your child doesn’t need long rows of stitches to perfect their stitches before making their first crochet projects. Practicing while making cute, kid-friendly crochet projects is way more fun, and will get your child crocheting faster and with more confidence. They will also progress so much faster. This is why I include lots of crochet projects in my online crochet course for kids ages 8-12, Crochet Made Easy! Click the link below this article to learn more.

5. Always count your stitches!

This is hands-down the most important tip I wish I knew before starting to make my first few crochet projects. It is not difficult for your child to be working away on their crochet project, blissfully happy with their progress, until they pause and take a closer look at it.

It is very common for one, or both, of two things to have happened. First, the crochet project is getting narrower. This is typically caused by accidentally skipping stitches on the row below. Each stitch that is skipped reduces the total number of stitches by 1. Usually a chain stitch is put in place of another stitch (single for example), if we do want to keep the same number of stitches in the row or round.

Second, the work starts getting wider. This is caused by putting more than one stitch into a stitch on the row or round below (it’s called an increase stitch). It is also commonly caused by mistaking the last stitch on the row. There are often what I call “bonus loops” on the ends of rows, which makes your work wider if you add stitches into them.

The easiest way to eliminate this issue is to always count the number of stitches in your row or round. You want that number to be the same every time. If your child is following a pattern, the stitch total they are going for will be included in the instructions for each row or round. Look for a number in parentheses (24).

Please let me know if you have any questions about the materials I covered in this post in the comments down below. If your child would like to learn to crochet with me, check out the link to my course Crochet Made Easy! below.