Reading Crochet Chart Symbol: Basics, Tips and Tricks

Hello, welcome to Marley Bird's YouTube channel. In this video, I'll show you how to read

crochet

chart

s. Let's title this

crochet

symbol

: Basics. Take a look here and we can get started. I went ahead and that's it. Very high-tech written instructions on how to read crochet

symbol

s. In fact, I've given you a kind of key. What's really cool about crochet symbols is that they are universal, so these symbols here are universally accepted symbols for these particular stitches. Pick up a Japanese stitch dictionary, a Korean stitch dictionary or an English dictionary or whatever, you will be able to read the instructions if you know what these symbols mean, so let's take a look at these symbols, they are actually very intuitive.

If you think about it, it's just a simple oval, it's the symbol for a chain stitch and that's actually what the chain stitch looks like. It looks like some kind of circle, it's just this little dot that you're going to work on. So whenever you see an open circle representing a chain stitch, when you see a dot, it might almost seem invisible, it's a slipped point in the box, if we think about it logically, a slipped stitch must be something invisible. the fact that a crochet symbol for a slip stitch is just a simple stitch, to me it makes sense when you move on to a single crochet, it's a squat MT or an X or some kind of symbol like that and that's a single crochet again if you think about what a single crochet looks like, it's kind of a small, squat crochet, so this and so it's partially, partially like the double crochet symbol, but it doesn't have that slash mark, so for dough or half double crochet, this symbol is a capital T, so whenever you see a capital T It means you're going to do half. high points high points are represented as a capital T with one slash high point is represented as a capital T with two slashes.

Now here's a little trick with oblique markings if you think of the oblique marking as your starting yarn on the hook. Before you start working on the stitch, you can see how many loops of your hook you want to make before inserting it into the actual stitch of your fabric, that is, when we make a double crochet, always yarn over your hook, you insert your hook the loop. into the stitch and pick up one loop of yarn over, yarn over two yarn overs, yarn over two yarn overs so that you initialize the first yarn over first before placing the hook in the stitch which is represented by that little slash mark right there when we do a double crochet, we are not over our hook twice, so you have the loop on the hook, you make the yarn over once, you make the yarn over twice and then you proceed to finish the double crochet, those two yarn overs are represented by those two slash marks, so if for example, you would come across the stitch that was cooked like that, it looks like the capital T, but maybe it had four slash marks, although I don't know what the official name of that stitch would be, but I know I'm going to pull the yarn over my hook four times and then make my stitch, that way when I pick up the loop I'll have my initial loop on the hook plus one, two, three four and then the yarn over and the loop that I just raised so it's going to be five, so I'll have five loops on my hook and I'll proceed to knit the yarn over through two yarn overs through two until I get I mean, I would continue doing that until I get back to where there's a loop on my hook, can you see how useful it is to be able to say oh, I may not know what stitch that is, but if I put 4 yarn overs on my hook I'll be able to complete any stitch that might be really useful now?

As you're

reading

the crochet

chart

s, you might come across a stitch where it's like a shell, so you'll see three double crochets and I know they're double crochets because I have my crochet symbol key right there, but I also know that I only have one yarn over before continuing with my stitch, so I have three double crochets and they all point to a chain stitch. This is what makes

reading

the graph so much better than reading the words. It's okay, sometimes you can come across instructions. and it will say three double crochets, a chain, three double crochets, a chain, and then you say to yourself, we'll wait, am I supposed to put those three double crochets in the next three stitches or do they all go to the next stitch, like this?

One is that if I came across this particular pattern on my chart, I can say, oh look, they want three double crochets in that same point, so my guess is that it's all done. I don't have to think to myself, oh, I need. to put a double in the first, a second and the third or it's all in the one. I can see all three of them going into one. The other thing is I know each of these are completed individually because each one has its own top hat, if you think of the top hat then it's the T, the capital T part if you think of it as the stitch finished, so when you complete your stitch, you'll be left with that really nice V at the top of the stitch, if you think of the top hat here in the symbol as that finished V, then it's a finished stitch, you know each one of those stitches is done individually, but if we go down here and we get to this stitch and we think Oh, okay, this looks like a T, but why does it have four four posts and four legs coming out of it?

Well, I can automatically assume that it's a half double crochet because I don't see any loops or I don't see any bar marks, right? so I'm going to assume it's a half double crochet and I'm also going to assume it's a two three four half double crochet, but since I only see one top hat, I know I'm going to partially complete these four half crochets. double crochets and then when I have all those loops on my hook, I'll yarn over and go through to the last one, so I'll only have one stitch left, a top hat right up here, when we finished each of these, we still had three. single stitches down here, I'm going to partially complete four half doubles, but I'll have one stitch left for the next row, these types of stitches are often called clusters, so if you come across the stitch pattern it will say: make a cluster of five double crochets could be if we drew it so let's draw it to have a group of five double crochets okay, if I said okay, I'm not exactly sure what that is, but I want it, I want to draw For my own purposes, I know that a group means that you will end up with a top hat, so I'm going to go ahead and start with my top hat and I have five double crochets, so I'm just going to put five lines and their double crochets, so I'm going to make my marks bar correctly, so I have five lines and a top hat and I know they're all going to go in one stitch because we're just going to say that's what the instructions say, let's say the previous stitch was a single crochet, so I drawing, so my symbol for a group of five double crochets is this, two, three, four, five partial double crochets with a top hat, all worked in a single stitch.

Can you see that? Can you see how that would work? Knowing that in my diagram this top hat represents what my finished stitch will be and I only have one top hat, even though I have all these stitch legs, you can think of those with the stitch post then I'm going to yarn over and pull through of all my loops to end with one leg. I hope that helps a little. I'm going to put this aside and don't worry, you can download this entire instruction sheet that I took painstaking computer time to draw and I'll post it.

You can get the link right there, so I'm going to check out the last two pages of my garden party sweater pattern and this pattern is available for purchase on the Marley Bird Comm website now, if you look here for the garden party sweater garden party, this is the symbol table for the border of this particular sweater and here I have the symbol key so that way I can use this to point out the points and show you what's happening. The written instructions for the border are very long, actually lasting another two pages. I mean, it just takes a long time to write all these instructions. whereas if I have a chart not only is it space, I'm saving space on the pattern itself, but I won't get lost in the written instructions of where I am in the middle of my row if I'm looking.

In my instructions here for my border, you could follow my graphic here. I have these numbers listed on the outside of the charts and those are my row counts, so if I'm on row 2 here, it's actually row 2 here and so on. this whole row there is row 2, row 3 would be row 3 and it comes this way now you can tell which direction it goes because of these rotating chains, look at those chains that are there, they are the ovals, they are the ovals. like I told you they would be, but they're going up and they're spinning, that's because in this particular example, these spinning chains count as half double crochet and one chain one, so two chains count as half double crochet and one chain one and we also know this because if we go back to row 3, this double crochet or half double crochet in row three is working in the second chain of that rotating chain, so it's very easy to see that this also answers the question of Are my twist chains actually a stitch in this pattern?

I'm not sure considering the next row is worked directly into those turning chains. I can say without a doubt that they are absolutely part of this part of the stitch pattern, so I would do it. count my spin chains like a stitch, you see how many questions are answered and you can look at a chart like this, just like I, if I read this chart, I always look for my spin chains and I know that's the side I'm going to start reading on. and just like when you're knitting, you work one side and you turn and then you work the other side, you turn like a typewriter in a way that you know you have to come back to so you start from the beginning and you go on, you read these frames like that when you turn your work back and forth like a snake so it's very easy to do that and these numbers on the sides help you do the other thing.

It should be noted that it is very easy to see where stitches are supposed to be made or where they are supposed to be placed when you look at a chart because I can tell, without even looking at any of these written instructions first, that my turning of the chain counts as one stitch. I can say that I am going to put a half double crochet in the first to third double crochet. I know I'm going to chain two and I'm going to skip two single crochets and put a half double in the next single crochet.

I can say that I'm going to repeat that all the way and finish with a half double on my single. I can say I'm going to make three chains for the next row and I can tell I'm going to put a half double in my chain half double two half doubles in my half double all the way down and I can tell I'm going to finish with the half double in the second chain of my spinning chain, can you see that if I continue all the way here I'll get to row five and look what we have here?

I have high points but there is only one top hat, that means it will only be one point, so that's the clue. He told me I'm going to do a partial double crochet in that chain a partial double crochet in that chain and I'm going to finish everything with my top hat now there's something I want to point out. I just said I'm going to do these partial double crochets in these chains. You can make an executive decision and not work in the chain, but go to space. You make that decision. It's going to affect your work.

It's not a big deal if. you like where you work in the space instead of the chain like I do then work in this space because you absolutely can do it so here I can say 1 2 3 4 turning chains to start my row 5 that's going to count as point I have a partial and a partial and I cast off with the top hat to make it look like a decrease but I'm not, I keep casting off with the same stitch because the same stitches count because look it's a half double half double half double and although I'm doing two double crochets partials I'm still finishing with a top hat so that one point is still represented as it was before.

Can you see I mean it makes a lot of sense to me? so we continue, we have two chains and we do the partial again, it has a top hat, so we know that they are partially completed and finished with a stitch, you continue, continue, I want to go up here. to row 7 and I want to show you how when you have double crochets or a stitch pattern that has a bunch of stitches done in one space because I would work all of those in that space, but look how each one has its own top hat, like this It is very clear to me that these points are completed individually and will be done alone throughout the process.

I hope this helps you read the charts and helps you visually see better what I'm going to do. I know that the moment I was able to start reading charts and figuring out what was going on in the stitches, my crocheting was much better. easy because I no longer got lost in the words, the graphics may be the best. friend and don't be afraid to make your own charts to help you understand what a stitch pattern might tell you to do because it's a great way to start getting introduced to charting and really learning how they can work for you, go back and check out some of my other videoshere on this channel.

I teach you how to do many techniques, stitch patterns, go over different projects with you and have a lot of fun. so join me again here hit subscribe to be updated every time a new video is posted and I'll talk to you later bye guys.