If you've followed all of the lessons so far you should probably be able to pick up a pattern and at least have some clue of what you're doing. We've gone over a lot of the abbreviations already and some of the other things you'll see like increases, decreases, and texture stitches. But reading patterns can still be a little intimidating. For someone who has never read a crochet pattern before, it might look like a different language and usually it is, it is the crochet shorthand.
I want to go over the most common crochet language that you'll see in crochet patterns. Will you see stuff as you go that I don't go over? Yes. But once you know these basics, you should be able to figure almost anything out. And after that, there is always google.
You've seen a few forms of this chart before but I've added a few things this time. From now on, this chart will be your best friend. Get to know it, take it out for coffee -- you know the drill.
Directions in crochet may seem a little weird when you get started but they really do a good job of making a lot of directional statements very short and efficient. Once you know the way patterns should be written, you'll find that a really wordy pattern is really hard to understand. Once we go over charts, you'll see that the more simple the directions, the better.
Crochet patterns often use a lot of parentheses, brackets, and asterisks which make them look a lot like algebra problems. In fact, crochet kind of has its own order of operations like Algebra.
As I was researching how to teach you guys about reading patterns, I found this absolutely wonderful article and I think it's one of the best explanations of how to read the crochet language that I have ever seen. There were even some symbols that I haven never come across before. So guess what... More assigned reading!!
Assigned Reading - Learning to read crochet patterns by Brenda Stratton
I think the best way to start reading a pattern is for us to read a pattern together. So Im going to take you through the class pattern that you can download in Lesson 19.
If you need any help leave a comment and we'll work through it together.
Credits - Chalkboard backgrounds: Kitschy Digitals by Danielle Thompson Chalkboard Paper Kit. Fonts used: school script dashed, Rudiment and Homemade Apple.
