14-Day Learn to Crochet—Half Double Crochet

Hi, welcome back to the 14-day Learn to Crochet series. In this video, we're going to be learning the half double crochet stitch. So this is an example about what the half double crochet stitch looks like, front and the back. This is my dish cloth cotton, my dish cloth swatch. I'm gonna be working with this chunky CYCA number five yarn and an L hook, but you might be using something different, and that's totally fine.

Before I begin, I just wanna talk about pulling the yarn off of your skein. So this works for skeins or balls like this. You can take your yarn off the outside, just like this, but as you work, it's going to start bouncing around and rolling back and forth, and it might be kind of annoying to you. So you should think about if you wanna try and pull the yarn out from the inside. Once you get the yarn out from the inside, it comes out very smoothly.

It just feeds right out of the ball. The ball just sits there. But getting the yarn out can create a tangly mess. This is something that I've done hundreds of times, so I've gotten pretty good at finding the center of the ball. This is gonna take a little experimenting for you if you've never done it before.

And you might end up with a big blob of yarn that's a tangle, so this is the risk that you take. So what you do is you just find the center here where all the yarn kind of wraps around, and you can put two fingers in, your finger and your thumb, and you just feel around for what you think is the center of the ball. It kind of feels like there's a little bit of a space in there usually. And then you just grab a little bit of whatever you can get to from the center, and pull it out. So you might end up with a much larger blob than that if you pull it out slightly off-center, and that's called a yarn barf.

And then what you can do with your yarn barf is you can just wrap it around the outside of your yarn like this, just to make it a little bit easier to deal with so it's not gonna be tangling up on the table as you're working from it. And then once you pull this all off of your yarn and you've worked through that far, it'll just feed right out of your skein, which is really nice. So totally up to you, whichever way, there's no wrong way as long as you're okay with untangling a little bit of the yarn barf if that happens to come out. So let's begin. We're gonna start, again, with the foundation chain that we already learned.

So we'll do our slipknot. We make the circle, flip the circle over onto the side of the yarn that's close to the ball of yarn like that. And then you see that center loop, that's where you're gonna put your hook underneath just like that. And you're gonna pull on that. And then you're going to pull on the yarn coming from your ball of yarn and slide right up next to your hook, just like that.

Okay, we're gonna chain 10 just for fun, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. And then I'm going to add two more chains for the turning chain. Now, remember when we did single crochet, we only chained one. The reason we're chaining two is 'cause a half double crochet stitch is taller than a single crochet, so we need to taller ladder to get up to the next level. So we're gonna chain two more for our turning chain, one, two.

So that means when we start working into our chain, we're going to ignore or skip over those last two 'cause they're going to become our turning chain. So again, I'm gonna work into the bottom of my chain because that's what I prefer. But you can work into the top of your chain, whichever way you wanna do it, totally fine. So we're skipping those two, and we're gonna go underneath this third one. So before we insert our hook underneath from front to back, just like normal, we are going to do a yarn over first.

So you will take the yarn, wrap it around your hook just the way you always yarn over from back to front over the top like that. And then you're going to insert your hook. I like to use this finger to keep that loop on the hook. You're gonna insert your hook from front to back underneath that stitch. And then you're gonna yarn over again, pull up a loop and then you will yarn over and pull through all three.

That's one half double crochet. Let's do that again. So we yarn over first. Then insert your hook from front to back under your chain, in through your chain, yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through three. So we'll continue that.

Yarn over, insert hook, yarn over, pull up loop, yarn over, pull through three. Yarn over, insert hook, yarn over, pull up loop, yarn over, pull through three. So that's making a slightly taller stitch than our single crochet. And it has this kind of neat extra little bar across the back of it. That's a characteristic of a half double crochet on the backside of it.

So we're gonna work all the way across. I'll do it a little faster so you can see what it looks like after you are more comfortable with the stitch and you're able to just not think about it too much. Yarn over, insert hook, yarn over, pull up loop, yarn over, pull through three. That's the motion of the half double crochet. So we've reached the end of our row.

And the next thing we're gonna do is do our turning chain. Remember, the turning chain is gonna be two stitches this time. So let me say something about turning chains first though, because as you're taught how to crochet, there are specific numbers of chains that you're supposed to put on the end. But you know what? If that doesn't work for you, if the chains are not, don't get you high enough up, you can add another turning chain.

If the turning chain is kind of bagging out and creating a little gap between the turning chain and your fabric, you can do one fewer stitch. One thing that I like to do because I feel like my tension, my gauge is like a little bit in between, is I like to work my two stitches, but then I work them just a little tighter. I'll show you that. So I just do my two chains for my turning chain, one, two. And on those two chains because on this part of the swatch, anyway, I'm not going to use this turning chain as a stitch.

I'm going to just not count it as a stitch. I will never be working into this turning chain, so it doesn't matter if it's a little tight. So I like to do my turning chains just a little tighter than normal. You don't need to worry about this. If this is too much for you to think about, just do your two chains, but maybe come back to this later if you notice that your chains are sticking out from your piece, or if they're somehow constricting the edges of your piece.

And you can watch this part again. So we'll do the two turning chains. Turn your work, and then you're gonna yarn over, and because we are not using the turning chain as a stitch, we are just going to be not counting that as a stitch, we're going to be working into that first space. So that first stitch, here's a turning chain, turning chain, there's your stitch right there, gonna work under those two loops. And you can see that's the back bar of your half double crochet that I was talking about earlier, that kinda characteristic horizontal line.

It's right above that that you put your hook in, okay, so it's underneath the V, but on top of that bar. So you're gonna yarn over, insert your hook, yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through three. We'll do that a few more times. Yarn over, insert hook, yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through three. Okay, I'll show you what that looks like across the row.

And again, I talked about this in the single crochet video, but I also wanna mention, as you're learning this, it is very helpful to put a stitch marker in the very first and the very last stitch that you do so you can always see where you're supposed to be putting your hook 'cause it can be confusing when you're first learning how to crochet, like where is that loop? I'm not sure. You know, when you look at this, do you put your hook in here? Did we already do our last stitch? Where is it?

It is above that horizontal bar and below that V. We don't wanna miss that last stitch. If you keep missing stitches as you go back and forth, then your piece is gonna get narrower and narrower because you're secretly decreasing. You're gonna make a triangle or a trapezoid instead of a square or rectangle. If you're adding stitches in there by accident, if you think there's a stitch here, and then you're like oh wait, maybe I didn't do the last stitch, and then you add another stitch here, it's gonna get wider and wider as you go back and forth.

Now, that may be helpful if you're actually trying to shape something and you wanna change, you know, change it to be a larger piece, but you need to know where to stop and where to start on each row end. And that can be a little tricky, so definitely use those stitch markers. So yarn over, insert hook, yarn over, pull up loop, yarn over, pull through three. Okay, and then we're gonna do our turning chain, one, two, and turn. And let's just say, for example, we wanted to use our turning chain as a stitch, okay?

So if this was gonna count as a stitch, and if you're working from a pattern, it should tell you whether the turning chain counts or it doesn't count. You can decide, but just make sure if you're making your own decision about whether the turning chain counts or not, if you're working on your own design, or you're just making, you know, a dish cloth or something like that, you get to decide that, but just make sure that you're consistent because if you're not consistent, then you're gonna end up adding stitches or subtracting stitches, just depending. All right, so we're gonna count this as our first stitch. So that means we skip this first stitch here. We're not gonna work into that.

So we have turning chain, turning chain, that counts as a first stitch. Then we're gonna yarn over, insert hook into that next stitch. Yarn over, pull up loop, pull through the three. And I'll do a few more stitches, and then I'll show you what that looks like. So this, here is our turning chain, and it's counting as that first stitch.

It's instead of one of these stitches. So what ends up happening sometimes with turning chains is you can get a bigger gap right here, a little hole next to your turning chain because your turning chain isn't really as thick as one of these half double crochet stitches. So that's why normally I don't like to count my turning chain as a stitch, but that is completely a matter of personal preference. There are a lot of people who always count their turning chains as their stitch and always skip that for stitch, and that's fine. So what happens as you're working if you wanna do increases?

Now, as we talked about on the single crochet video, what an increase is is when you just put more than one stitch into a stitch from the previous row, right? So we're gonna do two stitches into this next stitch. I'll show you a half double crochet increase. So you'll yarn over, insert your hook, yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through two. And now we're gonna do a second half double crochet into that very same space.

Yarn over, insert your hook into the same place. Yarn over, pull up a loop and pull through two. So there's your increase. Both those stitches are in one stitch right there. So as you work on that, and if you go back and forth and keep adding stitches, your piece is gonna get bigger and bigger because you're adding stitches.

You're adding width to your piece. And what happens if you wanna do a decrease, if you want to have fewer stitches? So let's say we wanted to do a decrease here. And this part, this is a little bit hard for me to teach this part because I do not like the basic half double crochet decrease stitch. It's called a half double crochet two together.

And that is abbreviated HDC2, like the number two and then TOG for together. I'm gonna show it to you so you know how to do it, and then I'm gonna show you a variation on it and explain why I like my variation better. So here's the half double crochet two together. You're gonna yarn over, insert your hook, yarn over, pull up a loop, just like you're making a regular half double crochet. And instead of doing your last yarn over and pulling through all of them, you will begin the same exact process, but working into the next stitch.

So you're gonna make another yarn over, insert your hook, yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, and you're gonna pull through all five of those loops, just like this, pshew. Now, what happened here is here we have a half double crochet stitch, and here's a half double crochet two together. The reason I don't particularly like this decrease stitch is because it's so bulky. It just calls attention to it. When you look at a piece, unless you're making it in a decorative way, like a line of decrease stitches or something like that, if you want it to blend in with your fabric, it kinda sticks out.

I'll do one more just like that so you can see even more what I mean. So you'll yarn over, insert your hook, yarn over, pull up loop. Stop at that point, and now we're gonna work into the next stitch. Yarn over, insert hook, yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through all five. So there's two decrease stitches in a row.

And so this starts to get kinda stretched out, and then there's a big lump here. So here's an alternative way to do that where you don't have quite as much going on on here. And there are other variations, too, but I'm just gonna show you this other one because it's very similar, it's very close to the basic half double crochet two together. So you yarn over, insert your hook, yarn over, pull up a loop. Then instead of doing a yarn over first, you just insert your hook into the next stitch, yarn over, pull up a loop there, and then you yarn over and pull through the four loops.

Now, that looks a lot more like this stitch right here. We have combined those two stitches together into one, so that is a decrease, but because we left off that yarn over at the beginning of the second stitch we worked into, it's just not quite as bulky. I'll show you that one more time. So you will yarn over, insert hook, yarn over, pull up a loop, and then you will, instead of doing your yarn over, you're just going to insert your hook, pull up a loop in the next stitch, yarn over and pull through four, just like that. So that's starting to force our fabric to go in, and it's just a little bit less bulky than the first decrease that I showed you.

And I like it a little bit better. But it's personal preference, you do it the way that you wanna do it. So if you are working on a dish cloth swatch for your half double crochet stitch pattern, you can chain 16 and work back and forth until it becomes a square. And then you're gonna do your finishing exactly how we did it for the last video, where we worked a single crochet border all the way around. You could work a half double crochet border all the way around, but you'll need to add extra stitches into the corners.

So just to keep it simple, usually when you're doing a border around the edges to clean it up, you'll just do a single crochet anyway. So you'll just do it exactly the same way as you did it for your single crochet finishing swatch. So you can go ahead and work on your half double crochet swatch and practice with your increases and decreases. And then when you're ready, on the next video we are going to learn how to work in double crochet. So please join me for that.