How to start a round crochet piece with a chain (no magic loop!)

i’m gonna show you another way to start crocheting something that’s in the round using what’s called the chain method so here i have what’s called a foundation chain i took this piece of yarn i created this thing that looks like a braid and i want to just show you conceptually first what this chain method entails before we try it so i’ve made this chain it’s extra long we’re going to connect the front and the back of the chain like so to create a circle we’re not done yet this is just a circle that we’re going to use to be able to hold the yarn that we’re ultimately going to crochet into this middle point over and over again so your pattern might say something like make a magic loop with six single crochet stitches in it this counts as the loop and then you would put six single crochet stitches in here now i’m going to show you how to actually do that and what that all means so you’re gonna take your raw yarn and you’re gonna have your yarn tail on the left and working yarn on the right and you’re gonna arrange it like a horseshoe or a candy cane now you’re going to take the yarn tail and cross it over the working yarn so that it looks like a four if you were to hold on to points over here with your left hand now hold on to the part where the yarn intersects and then put your thumb and your forefinger under the hole of the four and you’re just gonna flip your hand over like so to pick up the working yarn and bring it through that loop now you’re gonna pull on the yarn tail so that knot forms this knot and this whole technique i was showing you is called a slip knot don’t worry if your loop is really big or not because this is adjustable before you adjust it though grab your hook if you are right-handed you want this slip knot to be to the left of your hook if you’re left-handed you want it to be to the right of your hook and now to make this loop smaller all you got to do is pull on the working yarn so now you have a slip knot on your hook get into crocheting position and now we’re gonna do what’s called the chain stitch so hold on to your yarn as close as possible to your hook so that you have most control and we’re gonna yarn over so that’s pushing the yarn away from you otherwise known as bringing the yarn over the top of your hook from the back to the front and then bring that yarn through the loop that’s on your hook that was one chain stitch if you turn it over you can see that horizontal v that represents a stitch we’re gonna make four total so again yarn over and then pull it through the loop that’s on your hook and notice how every time i make a chain stitch i’m adjusting my left hand to hold the yarn close to the hook because it’s going to be a lot easier to work with the yarn if your hand’s up here versus down here all right here’s the third chain [Music] here’s the fourth chain you do want to try to make these stitches as tight as you can because this is now these four chain stitches are the chain stitches that we’re going to connect to create the tiny circle that we will then put our hook through the center of and if you want to minimize the chance that your final piece has a hole in the middle you want these stitches as tight as possible okay so we’ve made four chain stitches now we gotta connect the last stitch we just made to the first stitch we just made and sometimes people have a little trouble identifying what the first stitch was um my tip is to look for the horizontal v’s count backwards from the one that you know you just made so one two three four and if that’s still not clear if you pull on the yarn tail and the yarn tightens that little nubbin is the slip knot and not a stitch that’s not where your hook’s going all right so if you remember with the longer chain i showed you in the beginning we’re going to create a circle by doing this i guess this looks a bit more like a u right now and then you’re going to put your hook under you’re going to split this v of the very first stitch you’re going to put it under only the top loop of the v so right now that v looks like this you’re putting your hook only under this v this part of the v and now you’re going to do a slip stitch which is yarning over and then pulling that yarn through both loops on the hook now you’ve made a little circle and you’ve got to find the center of this so remember that demo i showed you in the beginning all we did was turn essentially this chain stitch of yarn into a circle like this we have to find the middle of it now so just pull on both edges of this circle to find it uh and you’ll see it’s over here and sorry before you actually then crochet in there let’s do another chain stitch so you yarn over pull it through the loot on the hook that does not count towards the number of stitches that you need to crochet in this loop that was just to create some height so now you’re going to put your hook in the very middle of this circle yarn over pull it through the middle of the circle again so i have two loops on the hook yarn over pull it through both loops that was the first single crochet stitch now you’re going to make five more single crochet stitches assuming that the pattern said six single crochet stitches and a magic loop and you’re always going to put your hook in that same center hole of the chain that you just turned into a circle so i’m going to show you again put your hook into that donut hole yarn over pull the yarn through the donut hole so you have two loops on the hook yarn over again and pull through both loops on the hook and when you’re doing this you want to try to make sure that this donut stays flat as you’re crocheting don’t let it twist around and things like that so here’s the fourth one here’s the fifth one [Music] here’s the sixth one [Music] now you have your first round done in a circle so now you can keep building on it