Beginners Instructions on How to Crochet Left & Right Handed

Crocheters can use their right or left hands to make beautiful creations with yarn and thread.

Crocheting is traditionally a right-handed craft; crochet books and patterns demonstrate how to crochet by holding the hook in the right hand. However, left-handed people who want to learn to crochet can still use their dominant hand. It just takes a few small adjustments to the basic technique to be able to crochet holding the hook in your left hand.

Things You'll Need

• Yarn
• Crochet hook

Instructions

1. Hold the hook in a way that is comfortable for you. One way is to hold the hook between the thumb and index finger of the dominant hand with the hook pointing down toward the thumbnail, as if pointing a magic wand. The second method is to hold the hook between those same fingers but with the hook pointing up, as if holding a fork. Either method works; experiment with both styles to find which one works best for you.

2. Learn the a chain stitch. To start to crochet, use a slip knot to attach the yarn to the hook. To make a chain stitch, wrap the yarn up and over the hook from back to front, catch the yarn with the hook, and pull a loop through the slip knot. Continue this process of wrapping the yarn around the hook, which is called making a "yarn over," then hooking the yarn and pulling it through the closest loop to the hook, which is called "drawing up a loop." A chain stitch has no particular direction, so you make it the same way whether you hold the hook in your right or left hand.

3. Make the basic stitches. The easiest stitch in crochet is known as the single crochet stitch. To make a single crochet into your chain stitch, insert the hook into the second chain from your hook. Yarn over and pull up a loop, but don't pull through the loop on your hook just yet. Instead, yarn over again and draw it through both loops on your hook. Now you have made a single crochet stitch. When you crochet right-handed, work single crochet stitches in a line down your chain stitches from right to left. When you crochet left-handed, work from left to right.

4. Continue to follow a pattern. To crochet right-handed, just follow the stitches in a row of a pattern, working from right to left. When you reach the end of a row, make one or a few chain stitches as called for in the pattern, and turn your work in order to work from the right to the left of the second row. If you are left-handed, you work left to right. Sometimes this does not matter; for instance, a single-crochet pattern can be made left to right or right to left. But if you are left-handed, where you have to change your stitches through a row to make a pattern, you have to read a pattern backwards; do the stitches from the end of the row and work to the beginning of a row, instead of the other way around.

References

• CraftBits: How to Crochet Left Handed
• Crochet Pattern Central: Crochet Tutorial Instruction, and "How To" Directory