Maui also likes to supervise when I’m designing – here he makes sure that my yarn ball doesn’t get away from me while I crochet succulents…

The balls I crocheted for my Yarn Over vs Yarn Under comparison had a dual purpose – I added some catnip as I stuffed them, so they could double up as new toys for Maui.

Maui won’t care if I crocheted these with YO or YU, as long as there’s catnip inside!

But that wasn’t good enough – he already has crocheted balls to play with, and I wanted to give him a really special treat. So I put on my creative thinking cap and the result was pretty amazing – I think I may have created the best cat toy ever! It turned my 8-years-young lazypuss into a kitten again, and held his attention for far longer than any store-bought toy has.

If you have, or know, a cat, and you like to craft, you must try this. It’s really easy, it only takes 5 minutes, you’ll have a valid excuse for eating chocolates while you craft, and you’ll have the happiest cat in the neighbourhood! The foil makes an irresistible crinkly noise when the ball is played with.

The ball on the right has been thoroughly quality-tested by Maui, and after half an hour of kitty football, stalking, pouncing and batting, being carried by mouth, dropped into shoes and being fished out again, you can see that it hasn’t fallen apart at all!

Note: this is my first donationware craft tutorial. As I’ve had requests for PDFs of other tutorials, I’ll also be converting some of my older tutorials to donationware, as I find the time, so there’ll be a handy printable option for them too. As always with my donationware, the full tutorial is available online for free, whether or not you choose to pay for the PDF version!

Go to the Crinkle Ball Cat Toy tutorial >>

Let’s look at the difference:

• With a normal crochet YO, you place the hook underneath the yarn strand and then hook the yarn from below.
• With a yarn under (YU), you put the hook over the yarn strand and then hook the yarn from above.

Here’s how they look, if you’re right-handed:

And if you’re left-handed:

I think the confusion may lie in the name yarn over. In crochet, you don’t really wrap the yarn over your hook at all: you use the hook to catch the yarn, so the phrase “yarn over (hook)” would be more accurately named “hook under (yarn)”…

I’ve put together a video to help clarify this – the first in my new Crochet Quickies series of short (around 1 minute) videos to explain very basic or brief crochet techniques. (I’ll still be making longer videos too, for techniques that would benefit from a little more explanation.)

Crochet Quickie: Yarn Over (right-handed)

Crochet Quickie: Yarn Over (left-handed)

Note: The videos may look a little small embedded in the blog: if so, you can fullscreen them or click through to YouTube to watch them in full HD resolution

If you are crocheting – and this applies to all standard and Tunisian crochet stitches – passing the yarn over the hook is always the correct way to do a YO.

If you’re not sure which way you do it, grab some yarn and a hook. Pause when you’ve hooked a loop of yarn, just before you draw it up through the stitch, and see which way the yarn lies across your hook, using the photos or videos above for reference – you may discover you’ve been crocheting incorrectly! To try to tell if you’re doing it right in future, remember it’s called yarn over, so the yarn goes over the hook, i.e. the hook should pass under the yarn before you hook the yarn.

Exception

Now here’s the exception, and one I’ve experienced first-hand: this does not necessarily apply for knooking (knitting with a special crochet hook – see my review of The Knook for more information). With knooking, the way that you position the yarn across your hook varies depending on whether you’re knitting or purling. When I first tried knooking, I used a standard YO for all my stitches and they ended up twisted. Why this difference? Because knooking, despite using a crochet hook, is not crochet, it’s knitting with an unusual technique.

There may be other exceptions that require you to wrap the yarn in a different way, but the stitch instructions should always inform you if that’s the case. If all you see is “yarn over” or “YO”, the standard way is the correct way.

Does it really matter?

Yes and no! The difference is more visible with some crochet stitches than with others. For knooking and Tunisian knit stitch, it’s extremely important to use the intended YO/YU. For other crochet stitches, there is a difference in the finished appearance, but it may be much less obvious.

Simone from my Ravelry group worked up a test swatch in rows of sc, which shows a clear difference between the rows of YO and the rows of YU:

Rows of YO and YU (swatch and photo by Simone, used with permission)

You can see that there’s a definite slant/twist to the YU stitches compared with the YO stitches, and each YO stitch is more clearly defined – the YU stitches seem to blend more into a flatter finished surface. They both look attractive, but they are clearly not the same.

YU in amigurumi

I thought it’d be interesting to see what, if any, difference you’d see if you worked amigurumi (single crochet, worked in the round without turning) with YU, so I made two small amigurumi balls, worked identically except for the YOs or YUs throughout.

Almost immediately, I noticed something unexpected: a flat circle is actually flatter when worked in YU! Normally, the backs of all the stitches are larger than the fronts (because we aren’t turning the work between rounds), which makes a flat circle want to curl up slightly into a bowl shape, with the right side on the inside of the bowl. You can see that slight curling at the edge of my YO sample, but it’s missing from the YU sample! Very interesting…

Left: YO edges are curved up (the ‘v’s around the edge face upwards)
Right: YU edges are perfectly flat (the ‘v’s around the edge face outwards)

I found YO and YU equally easy to work, although of course I had to concentrate on every stitch with the YU sample to make sure I didn’t slip back into my usual automatic YO method. And now let’s look at the finished samples:

From the top (magic ring visible)

From the side (there are 2 rounds with no increases/decreases around the middle of each ball)

• YO has more obvious texture, whereas YU is flatter. The twisting of the YU stitches seems to actually fill the gaps between the stitches better and each stitch is less clearly defined.
• The twisting of the stitches is very subtle, but I can definitely see a diagonal slant visible within each YU stitch. The slant is more pronounced on the decreases – invisible decreases aren’t so invisible if you YU!
• My YU sample is noticeably smaller. Although this could be a tension issue because of the unfamiliar YU hand movements, it could also contribute to the smaller gaps between stitches.

If your amigurumi stitches don’t look like other people’s, and you’re definitely not working inside out, this could be the reason!

Conclusion

The difference between YO and YU if you’re making amigurumi is slight, but it is noticeable if you’re looking for it. The difference can be more apparent with crochet stitches other than single crochet.

If you’ve just discovered that you’ve always worked in YU, I don’t think you necessarily need to change if you’re happy with the way you’ve been working. There’s no law that says you have to crochet in the same way as everyone else. You’re free to crochet in a non-standard fashion (unless you’re teaching crochet, or creating patterns, tutorials, or crocheted samples for patterns/books) – if you like the finished result, that’s all that matters.

I can confirm (from trying it in reverse) that it’s not easy to make the change, and you’ll probably need at least a few hours of heavy concentration before the different hand movements become natural, or maybe longer if you’ve been crocheting for many years. I would advise that you at least try working a small piece in YO, to try it out, and see how it feels and how the finished piece looks – you may find that you prefer it.

Whichever method you choose, the most important thing is to be consistent, and not switch between the two methods. It’ll only look like you’ve made a mistake if you suddenly switch from one to the other within a piece, which will make some of your stitches look different from others. But if you’d like your stitches to look like everyone else’s, YO is the way to go!

Top (L-R): 2006 kanzashi poinsettia; 2007 crocheted poinsettia 
Middle (L-R) 2008 polymer clay poinsettia; 2009 punchneedle poinsettia
Bottom (L-R) 2010 felt poinsettia; 2011 …?

The 2011 PlanetJune Poinsettia is a 3D beaded design. I used beading wire, seed beads, and the Victorian beading technique to create a 7cm (just under 3″) diameter poinsettia.

Once you’ve mastered the simple Victorian beading technique, it’d be easy to change the look to create different flowers by using different colours of beads, and by altering the number of beads on each row to create differently-shaped petals and leaves.

As an aside, I think this will be my last poinsettia tutorial – I had a few hours of beading fun, and then it took me the best part of 2 days to photograph, write and edit the tutorial (definitely work, not fun, and it took far more time than I had to spare). So, while I hope I’ll be able to continue to create and share my annual holiday poinsettias, I’ll take the pressure off myself by just crafting them for fun in future

Anyway, I hope you like my 2011 poinsettia design and that you’ll enjoy my final poinsettia tutorial!

Go to the Beaded Poinsettia tutorial >>

Before I get into the roundup though, I’d like to ask a quick favour: I’ve been shortlisted for Inside Crochet magazine’s 2011 Blog awards and, if you enjoy my blog, I’d really appreciate your vote. It just takes a click to vote; no signup necessary. Vote here – thank you!

PlanetJune Christmas Crochet Patterns

My 2011 holiday pattern isn’t quite finished yet (thanks to a gardening accident to my finger which forced me to reschedule my tutorial photography session for the pattern), but I hope to publish it before the end of November, so you’ll still have plenty of time to make it before Christmas!

In the meantime, here are my other Christmas patterns from my regular ranges:

Top row: Christmas Trees, Christmas Baubles
Middle row: Poinsettia (donationware), PocketAmi Christmas
Bottom row: Christmas Pudding (donationware), Candy Cane (donationware)

And from PlanetJune Accessories:

Reindeer Antlers, Lip Balm Holder (donationware – and a perfect stocking stuffer!)

By the way, there’ll be another Christmas CAL for all my holiday patterns in the PlanetJune Ravelry group from December 1st, and I think I’ll throw in some prizes like last year. You’ll find crochet-along details on Ravelry from Dec 1st, and I’ll post with a link here too once it’s all set up

PlanetJune Christmas Craft Tutorials

Top: Punchneedle Embroidered Poinsettia, Polymer Clay Poinsettia
Bottom: Felt Poinsettia, Pom-Pom Christmas Tree

I think that’s it! I hope you’ll find a project (or a few) that you’d like to try for your Christmas crafting this year. And please, don’t forget to vote for me

As it’s easier to show than to tell, I’ve put together a new video to demonstrate. I hope you’ll find it useful, if you haven’t already mastered this stitch.

(If you want to practice the technique, it’ll be featured in both of my next two patterns, and you’ll get a peek at one of them in the video – another new donationware pattern to be released later this week!)

Reverse Single Crochet (right-handed)

Reverse Single Crochet (left-handed)

Note: The videos may look a little small embedded in the blog: if so, you can fullscreen them or click through to YouTube to watch them in full HD resolution

I’ve been compiling a list of crochet technique videos that I plan to create over the coming months. If you have any suggestions you’d like me to add to my list, please let me know.

If you enjoy my crochet tutorial videos, please help to spread the word about them, and/or subscribe to the PlanetJune YouTube channel.

When I investigated the source, they were all coming from Pinterest and Tumblr – nothing weird about that. But then I clicked through to see the source, and here’s what I found:

Lovely! Except… not only is this not one of my shrinky rings, but a quick glance made me seriously doubt that it was a shrinky ring at all – there’s no way to make a seamless join with a shrink plastic ring, and this looked smooth and perfect. So why is it being linked to my tutorial?

I clicked through from Pinterest to see the source, and found this:

A tumblr site, with no attribution for the image at all. This is very common with tumblr – people ‘blog’ photos they’ve found online and there’s no link back to where they found the photo, or any information about it. This is why I avoid tumblr: it’s too frustrating to not be given any information about what you’re looking at.

But all is not lost! Thanks to Google’s new Search by Image function, you can enter the URL of a photo and it’ll show you where else that picture appears online. (It’s very useful if you want to see if anyone has been stealing your photos, as well as letting you track down the source for a creditless photo.)

To use the Search by Image feature, go to Google Images and click the little camera icon at the right of the search box:

Go back to your source picture* and grab its URL (right click on the picture; the exact wording of the option varies between browsers but in Chrome it says ‘Copy image URL’), then paste it into the search box:

* Edited to add: you can do this directly from its Pinterest page: don’t click the pin to go to the (supposed) source, just right click the image in Pinterest to get its URL.

After you click ‘Search’, you’ll see links from all over the internet, wherever a webpage uses the same photo. In this case, there are lots of results, and almost all of them are social bookmarking sites:

I ignored all those and looked through until I found one that sounded like it may be the original:

Bingo! And clicking through to Keri’s Autumn Bangle page informs me that this image is, in fact, nothing to do with either shrinky dinks or rings: it’s a bangle, “Designed as a one complete vector image then screened onto thin acetate. Next step, encase in resin for eternity. Sand, buff, wear. This bangle is for sale. If you’d like one, just ask!”

Now, just think how much business Keri may have received as a result of all this exposure, if only the first person to share her photo on Tumblr had credited this page, or her Etsy shop, as the source.

But instead, the anonymous image propagated, and, at some point, someone added the ‘information’ that it was a shrinkydinks ring, and someone else added the link to my tutorial… And, while I’m very happy to see my tutorial reach more eyes, I can’t and won’t take the credit for Keri’s lovely resin bangles! (If you’d like to order a bangle from Keri, her Etsy shop is Par Amour Design.)

A side note: in case you’re thinking of giving up on Pinterest as a source of inspiration, here’s an encouraging sign. Plenty of people are doing it right: a search for “shrinky ring” brings this:

Yep, 14 of those first 15 results are links to my tutorial – and there are many, many more if you scroll down.

So, three points to take away from this:

• Don’t believe everything you read online without question.
• Think before you share a link (whether on your blog, pinterest, twitter, facebook, or anywhere else) and make sure you’re actually linking to the most useful page for your readers!
• If a link doesn’t lead where you expect, a little sleuthing with Google can often turn up what you’re looking for.

Happy browsing…

Amigurumi Seamless Join

Stitching the pieces of an amigurumi together has always been my least favourite part of making amigurumi, as it’s so time-consuming – you have to be extremeley neat and careful to stop your stitches from showing and spoiling the look of the ami. That irk led me to develop and refine this new method that will easily create a practically seamless join between your pieces.

My Amigurumi Seamless Join technique allows you to create an almost invisible join in amigurumi when you stitch an open-ended piece to a closed piece. This is the type of join you’ll use for almost all amigurumi joining, for example: joining a muzzle and ears to a head; or joining a head, legs, and a tail to a body. (The only time you can’t use this method is when a pattern calls for you to join two open pieces together; in that case, whipstitching makes the best join.)

I hope you’ll watch the video and then give my Seamless Join method a try on your next amigurumi: I guarantee that your joins will look smoother and neater, with much less time and effort on your part.

Amigurumi Seamless Join (right-handed)

Amigurumi Seamless Join (left-handed)

Note: The videos may look a little small embedded in the blog: if so, you can fullscreen them or click through to YouTube to watch them full-sized

If you enjoy my crochet tutorial videos, please help to spread the word about them, and/or subscribe to the PlanetJune YouTube channel.

And, in case you missed my announcement last week, the crochet pattern for the Dimetrodon dino featured in this video is now available in my shop, both individually, and as part of my new pattern set: Dinosaurs Set 3.

Top (L-R): 2006 kanzashi poinsettia; 2007 crocheted poinsettia 
Bottom (L-R) 2008 polymer clay poinsettia; 2009 punchneedle poinsettia

So similar, and yet each has its own style. I love this tradition I created! I wonder how long I can keep thinking of new poinsettias to add to the collection…

The 2010 PlanetJune Poinsettia is almost a return to that very first kanzashi poinsettia, but with a twist: to keep it fast and simple, it’s made from felt. It would make a beautiful gift topper or table decoration, and you can increase the size to make it as big as you want – just cut the green squares slightly larger than the red, and you’ll be fine!

I had intended to make a fancy-schmancy version too, in purple and white, with embroidered petals and leaves, but you’ll have to imagine how lovely that would have been (in my head, at least, it’s stunningly beautiful) – sadly, it’s already too close to Christmas and I just don’t have any more time to spare. Maybe that can be my next year’s holiday poinsettia

Anyway, I hope you’ll enjoy my 2010 poinsettia design!

Go to the Felt Poinsettia tutorial >>

But anyway. I’ve managed to squeeze in the time to make an easy Christmas craft: a Pom-pom Christmas tree!

A few weeks ago, I picked up some Clover Pom-Pom Makers, for no reason at all except they look like fun and I doubt I’d be able to find them in South Africa. They are very clever, by the way: very fast and so much easier than having to pass the yarn through the centre of a ring each time! I’ll review them properly in another post when I have more time…

And now to the Pom-Pom Christmas tree tutorial:

Pom-Pom Christmas Tree Tutorial

You will need:

• Yarn in any colour(s) of your choice – I used worsted weight
• Pom-pom maker – I used a 45mm (1 5/8″) size. See Notes below for alternatives.
• Scissors – a small, sharp pair to cut the pom-poms, and a regular pair to cut the cardboard
• Yarn needle
• Cardstock – a square of thin card to form the base of the tree; I used an 11cm (~4.5″) square
• Tape
• Craft glue (any white glue will do)

Notes:

• I wanted to make a snow-covered tree, so I held two strands of yarn together to make my pom-poms: one green and one white. (My white yarn is actually a ‘Christmas’ yarn with a decorative silver thread running through it, but don’t bother with fancy yarns like that because only the cut tips show, so I could have got the same effect with a plain white yarn!)
• If you don’t have a Clover Pom-Pom Maker like mine, you can still make my pom-pom tree, using either the traditional cardboard circle technique or the finger-wrap technique to make the pom-poms.

Method:

1. Cut the card. You need to make the square into a quarter-circle by cutting off one corner as shown by the curved dotted line below. (It doesn’t have to be exact – it’ll all be hidden by the pom-poms – so you can just eyeball the curve.)

Here’s what you’ll end up with:

2. Bring the two straight sides together to roll the quarter-circle into a cone, so the two straight edges meet and then overlap. You see the little hole at the tip of the cone? That’s absolutely fine (in fact, we’ll use it later) so really, don’t worry about being neat with this. Tape in place.

3. Make a little slit (about 1cm long) at the bottom of the cone.

4. Make pom-poms! (use the instructions for your pom-pom maker, or one of the two alternatives I linked to in the notes above). Wind the yarn on…

Snip apart with sharp scissors…

Repeat until you have as many as you think you’ll need. (I started with a dozen and ended up needing 16. The exact number will depend on the size of your cone, the size of your pom-poms, and how closely you space them. You can make more later if you find you don’t have enough, so don’t worry too much about the number at this stage.)

5. Cut a long length of yarn – I cut about 1m to make sure it would be long enough – and thread it onto a yarn needle. Pass the needle through the centre of each pom-pom in turn, so you end up with a long chain of pom-poms. (Don’t cut off the excess yarn yet – you may need to add more poms shortly…)

6. Tie a large knot in one end of the yarn and slide the yarn into the slit at the bottom of your cardboard cone, with the knot on the inside.

7. Slide all the pom-poms down the yarn until the first pom touches the cone and each pom touches the next. Unless you want to be making poms constantly until Christmas Eve, don’t scrunch all the poms together, as shown here (look at the bunched up poms on the right):

Each pom should instead just touch its neighbour, as shown here:

8. Now wrap the string of pom-poms around the cone in a spiral. They should cover the cone completely. You may find that you need more poms than you imagined; here, I’d only made 12:

If this happens, just make more pom-poms and add them to the string. When you have enough (I used 16) the final pom-pom should sit on the top of the cone, so it’s completely covered:

9. When you’re happy with the number and positioning of the pom-poms, carefully unwrap the string from the cone and slather the cone with craft glue. Yes, I said slather and I mean slather – the amount in the photo below is not enough! While the glue is still wet, re-wrap the pom-pom string and then give the tree a gentle hug with your hands on all sides, to help the poms adhere to the cone. It doesn’t matter if they don’t all stick as long as most of them do!

10. When the glue has dried, lift up the top pom-pom (it won’t be stuck down unless you’re a gluing genius) and drop the yarn needle through the hole in the top of the cone.

11. Pull the excess yarn down through the bottom of the cone, cut another slit in the bottom of the cone and slide the yarn into it. This will help keep the tree together. Tie a knot in the yarn, to keep the yarn from slipping out of the slit., then snip off the excess yarn. Glue the knots down to the cone if you think your tree may get knocked about by kids or pets!

12. Decorate! In my ‘less is more’ style, I decided to just make a mini-pom (25mm) as a star for the top of the tree. You could decorate yours with bead garlands, mini-pom baubles, or anything else you want.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial! Please leave me a comment if you did…

And if you make one, feel free to add it to the PlanetJune Tutorials flickr group

Today I have another little crochet video tutorial for you. Loop stitch (aka fur stitch) is a decorative stitch similar to single crochet but with an added long loop of yarn formed on the back of the work. You can make the loops as long as you’d like, depending on your application – just wrap the yarn around something to create each loop so that all the loops you form are consistent in size. (I use my finger in my video tutorial, but you could use a wider piece of cardboard to form longer loops.)

I’ve seen at least 4 methods for creating loop stitch; my demo shows the method I find most effective, as, unlike the other methods I’ve seen and tried:

• It doesn’t distort the size of the ‘single crochet’ part of the stitch
• It locks the loop firmly into place
• The loops formed stand up nicely away from the work

Once you’ve finished crocheting with loop stitch, you can leave the loops as is for a curly, furry effect, or snip through the top of each loop to create straight strands of yarn sticking out from your work. It’s not a subtle look, but, in the right pattern, can be used to great effect!

And now to the video tutorial (in right- and left-handed versions, of course):

Crochet loop stitch (right-handed)

Crochet loop stitch (left-handed)

Note: as the loops are formed on the back of the stitches, you can’t use it while crocheting amigurumi unless you keep any pieces using loop stitches turned ‘inside out’ (see my tutorial Which is the ‘Right’ Side?).

You can put this tutorial (as well as my previous crocheted i-cord video tutorial) into practice with my new pattern, coming very soon…