Motif of the Month December 2015 Snowflake 3 Motif Crochet Tutorial

Hey everyone, it's Deja from crocheteverafter.com. Today is our newest motif of the month and it's our third annual snowflake. So it's December 2015. And every December I make a snowflake motif for you guys. And this is our newest one. So it's made, I've made it in worsted. You can make it in any size you want. So I'm only doing worsted so you can see the stitches better. But get some crochet thread if you want some nice small ones or some G 4mm hook. The pattern is in the link and let's get started. So to begin our snowflake we're going to put your loop on your hook. This is going to have a little open center in the center of our snowflake. So we're going to start with a chain six and then we're going to join that. So we yarn over from back to front, down, join with a slip stitch, push through, yarn over and using a hook we're using a G of four millimeter because we want this snowflake to be As tight as possible so that it will be, you know, pretty stiff without blocking. So, you can block it, but you don't necessarily have to. So, that's why we're using such a small hook with the medium worsted weight yarn. So, now for round one, we're going to chain one, and that's just to get some height. And then we're going to single crochet 12 times into this ring. So, I'm going to insert my hook straight through, yarn over, pull up a loop, do that 11 more times. Come back and join up and start round two. A single crochet. These will lay on top of your single crochets at the beginning of the round because there are so many. So remember, because this is crocheted around a ring, you can just kind of thing I like to remind people if they've never seen any of my videos, but if you're losing count... of your single crochets and you're brand new it's really difficult it's even difficult for me to count the front of these stitches i could not tell you how many i had trying to just count these squished up loops so always turn your work sideways and look at the top of your stitches so each of your stitches looks like the letter V so just count all of those V's we have 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 and that's also going to help you when you join, because you want to join in this first single crochet. So if you count backwards when you get to 12, that's where you're inserting your hook to do your slip stitch to join the round. So just insert your hook right through the top two loops, and this first one sometimes can be kind of tight because it's the first single crochet, so just kind of get under there, yarn over and pull through, so now we have round one down and we're ready for round two. Okay, round two is going to be an easy round as well, so we're going to chain three first as our very first double crochet, and then we're going to double crochet in the next stitch. So this one that we joined, that's going to count as our first stitch. That chain three is going to count as a stitch right here in this stitch. So double crocheting in our next stitch, we look for that V right to the left, or to the right if you're left-handed, and go under those top two loops and do your double crochet. Then we're going to start our repeat. So this is what we're going to do for the rest of the round. We're going to chain five. Make them nice and even chains. Keep them the size of your shaft. Don't make them too loose because this is going to be part of the design. You don't want these real loopy and inconsistent. So when you make them, make them the size of your shaft so that they all look the same. Then we're going to double crochet two times, or once in the next two stitches. So again, here's where we made our last double crochet. You can see the little hole I pull up on it, you can see. So we look to the left, or to the right if you're left-handed, and go into the next double crochet. We're not skipping any, or the next single crochet. We're not skipping any stitches, we are just going right into the next. We're creating a bigger motif by creating those chain fives. Okay, let me show you the chain five. Yarn over, point your hook down, so that way you don't have to pull out your chain. So if you find like you have to make a really big chain to get your hook through, because if I pull it out real big, I can turn my hook any way I want to and get through it. But to make your chain the same size as your shaft, just point your hook straight down at the stitch and you'll get through it nice and easy. That's not gonna work if I hold my hook sideways. I'm gonna get stuck. So point it straight down, pull through, Push it to the size of your shaft. And do that five times. When I make this first double crochet, it's gonna loop on itself. So when I first pull it up, notice that the chain kind of wraps around my hook. So it makes it a little difficult to work. So you can kind of just push it out of the way or get through those first two and then push it back and hold it down. So that way you can get through it nice and easy because it wants to turn on it. So we'll do that now. I'm gonna do four more times technically, three more times technically. So three more times with the chain five and double crochet, and then we'll meet up at the end to do chain five and to join it up. Just doing the last chain five in the instructions, our circle, and then we're going to join the round with a slip stitch in the top of our chain three. One, two, now we have a nice double this up as something else, but we're going to start chain, our round three, with a chain one. Pretty simple. We're going to single crochet in the same stitch as the join. So where we joined, where we made this chain one, we're going back in. So you'll kind of see a big hole right there. You're going to insert your hook right in that hole and do a single crochet. I'm not going to count our chain one as a single crochet because it never really looks like one. Chain threes can kind of get poofy and look like a double crochet, but a chain one just... Always gets squished and doesn't really look like a stitch, so I always like to put a single crochet there. Then we're gonna picot. So this picot is a chain four picot. If you look at your special stitches, it tells you what to do, but it's pretty basic. We're gonna do chain four and we're gonna make them nice and consistent like we did with our chain five. And then we're gonna slip stitch in that very first chain that we just made. Chain four, if you're not used to seeing these, you know where they are, go ahead and slip stitch in there. It's gonna give us our little snowflake. We're gonna single crochet in our next stitch. So these double crochets are going to be single crocheted into. If you look, it's kind of difficult sometimes to see where that double crochet comes out of. You'll see that big stitch we just worked into, and then this little V right next to it is where our single crochet is going into our double crochet. It's kind of small, but just make sure you're looking for those Vs. Single crochet there. A little pattern repeat in our chain five space. We're going to do a bunch of stitches. We're going to start with a single crochet Build up to get higher now. We're going to do a half double crochet double crochet and create like another point But without any kind of slip stitching we're just going to chain make those nice and tight and consistent then we're going to work our way back down. So now we're going to do another double crochet crochet crochet And then we start our process all over again. So that's one of our loops. We do the single crochet, so now we're doing the single crochet and our double crochet. So sometimes these are going to cover over this double crochet, so make sure you pull all these over out of the way. And look for that V that's right on top of your stitch. Single crochet in there, there you go, so chain 4, stitch. You'll notice I kind of like stop and grab because it's hard to get straight through a slip stitch with both loops in one swipe. So I always kind of do one at a time and move my stitches as I need to to get through them. I'm going to do our little build up again. Our single goes up and then back down and then we start over. So go ahead and finish the rest of this round and we'll join and look at the finished item. The last single crochet now I'm gonna join So we have our picot double crochet from below so you just join right in the top of that first single crochet which is right above the double crochet you can see the v right here insert our hook under the v two ends weave in which is nice your center and this top one's i'm going to weave this in and we'll check out okay i finished weaving in the end so i didn't really pull it out or anything so this is kind of what it looks like when i finish so as you go or once you finish you can kind of pull on it Get it all nice and straightened out and flat. So this doesn't necessarily need any blocking if you like the look of it how it is. You can block it if you want kind of more pointy points to give it more of a snowflake effect. I have the other snowflake video, the original first snowflake from December 2014 now, and it shows you how to block these so if you need to If you want to see how to block those, you can check out that video, but this is great in any size, so if you get the crochet thread, you can make them as ornaments, or this could be an ornament too, because it's not super huge, but you could hang that as an ornament, or a little garland would be really cute. But the crochet thread, you could make it as present decorations, so get some craft paper and some white crochet thread and weave into the paper and use the crochet for your presents. That would be really pretty. But lots of different uses for these, so if you have any questions, leave them below and thank you for watching!