7 Best Crochet Tips and Tricks

This collection of crochet tips and tricks makes crocheting easier, more fun, and more productive. They cover everything from basic methods to organizing and keeping your materials in order.

Many of these tips are designed for crochet beginners, but no matter how good you're, you can always learn something new. You'll also learn how to avoid common problems that arise when crocheting.

1. To prevent yarn balls from falling out and rolling, place them in a washed, reused cylindrical towel container. The yarn will come out through the same hole that the towels came through.

2. Twist your skein of yarn into a ball before you begin. Yarn balls don't tangle as easily. You can even get a ball winder to help you with this.

3. If you tend to get frustrated and burn out on difficult crochet projects, always have an easy, fun project on hand to work on until you're ready to move on to the more difficult project again.

4. If a crochet pattern has several color changes within a short distance of each other, you can carry the color you're not using over the previous row and crochet over it, then use it again when you reach the next area where it belongs.

5. To mark your rows, insert a hairpin, safety pin or paper clip through the rows and close or twist a contrasting colored piece of yarn into the valley of the first stitch. You can easily pull it out later when you're finished.

6. Store your crochet hooks in a pencil box, jewelry box, or travel toothbrush holder, or hang them from a thin piece of wood (for smaller hooks, you can staple fishing line to the wood and hang them from that). You can also repurpose many used food and snack containers for this purpose.

7. Design your pattern in Excel. This is a great crochet tip for tech enthusiasts! Print out your pattern so you can mark your rows as you work. This will help you remember where you were when you get interrupted. You can also print out the pattern larger so your eyes don't get tired as quickly. And you can color code the cells by filling in each cell with a color. Don't have Excel? Google Sheets is 100% free.