How to start a crochet oval

in this video i’ll show you how to crochet an oval so to crochet an oval you normally start with a chain stitch and as a quick review a chain stitch is made by holding your non-dominant hand so that your palm faces you and then putting the yarn tail in front of your palm of the working yarn behind your palm now using your dominant hand grab the yarn tail and then bend it while holding on to another part of the yarn tail with your thumb of your non-dominant hand so that you can create the number four now put your thumb and index finger into the gap of the four under from the bottom and then just turn your hand over and grab the stem of the four which is the working yarn and pull it through and you can just pull on working yarn until you’ve created a knot this is a slipknot now you’re going to if you are right-handed put this loop on your hook and keep the knot that you made to the left of the hook if you’re left-handed you’re going to keep the knot to the right of the hook either way you’re going to pull on the working yarn until the knot is right next to your hook normally i say that for beginners they should crochet loosely except for a foundation chain you actually want to crochet pretty tight for a foundation chain which is what we’re going to do next alright so to do a chain stitch hold on to your yarn ideally as close as possible to the hook so in this case i’m going to literally hold the slip knot now yarn over but pushing the working yarn away from you with your hook and then pulling that yarn through the loop that’s on your hook that was one chain stitch let’s make four so here’s two three four now we’re going to single crochet stitch in the second chain from the hook so the concept of an oval we’re going to get to an oval from this chain i promise you and the concept of it is that we’re gonna grow the edges while keeping the middle part flat so that means we’re gonna be mixing like increased stitches or sometimes even three single crochet stitches in one stitch to make that happen so step one is skipping the second chain from the hook this is a very typical thing you do when you’re working with chains because usually this uh chain that’s immediately next to the hook is being used to give your piece some height so here’s one v it means this is the second chain from the hook and you’re gonna split that v you’re just gonna put your hook through the middle of it so that you have put it under only one side of the bead so you have two loops on your hook right now now you’re going to do a single crochet stitch so yarn over pull it through just that top loop of the v so you have two loops on your hook yarn over again pull it through both loops on the hook so visually making an oval can be a little confusing so i would recommend at this point putting a stitch marker in the stitch you just made so that you can remember that that is the beginning of the second round so now we’re gonna do three single crochet stitches in the next chain so now we’re going to do another single crochet stitch in the next chain so here’s the next chain you can tell you split this chain so that’s not the one you need to go one over put your hook in there yarn over pull it through yarn over pull it through both loops on the hook all right and then i said that to make an oval what we’re going to do is grow the edges and the way we’re going to grow those edges is by putting three single crochet stitches in this last chain this represents the fourth chain that you had made in the beginning of this video so here’s one single crochet stitch we’re gonna go through the same hole put a second single crochet stitch in there and then again that same hole for a third single crochet stitch now you’re gonna rotate your work so now you can work through the other side of the foundation chain so you just put three single crochet stitches through the same stitch now you need to put a single crochet stitch in the next empty half of the foundation chain which is this one you can tell because you have crocheted and split open this chain um also quick tip i would recommend crocheting over the yarn tail if you can to save yourself some time so that you don’t have to weave that yarn tail in later on all right now you just need to do an increase stitch in the following stitch and that is because let me put my hook in here so that you can see hopefully a bit better in the beginning that very first single crochet stitch you made was actually already in the same hole and so in total you’re making three single crochet stitches in this one chain which would match the number of single crochet stitches that you made on the other side of the chain since you already made one of those three in the very beginning we only need to make two this time so here’s one single crochet stitch and two single crochet stitches and here’s the beginning of your oval and you can see here see how there’s some gaps in the very middle of the piece that is why i was recommending in the beginning to crochet your foundation chain super tight so that you can minimize the size of these holes