Although I realise this is not quilting, I was dismayed to see a number of videos on YouTube showing how to crochet but most of them showed the crochet hook being held like a poker!

My response is to show you how to hold a crochet hook the way I was taught by Gran Anderson many years ago. She was amazingly skillful and this method is much more likely to give you even crochet work.

The crochet work has been started and the hook is in place.

Pick up the work with the hook. There will be one working hand holding the hook and one tension hand. The crochet hook will be in your right hand if you are right handed and your left hand if you are left handed. Put the yarn over the index finger of your tension hand,

then under your middle and ring finger.

Wrap the yarn round your little finger,

all the way round.

This is the arrangement which retains the correct working tension and your index finger will spend most of the time holding the yarn away from the work.

Gently press your little finger against your ring finger.

Hold the work beneath the hook between the thumb and middle finger of your tension hand. This forms the triangle which keeps the tension correct.

There is a flat area on the crochet hook which shows its size. Put the middle finger of your working hand onto one side of the flat area.

Put your thumb onto the side of the flat area which contains the numbers.

The ring finger of your working hand will hold the loop in place to stop it sliding off the hook.

Put the hook into the next stitch.

Push it through.

Wrap the hook round the yarn.

Pull it back towards the work,

then back through the work,

then through the loop already on the crochet hook.

This forms a new loop on the hook.

Once more take the hook through the next stitch,

round the yarn,

back towards the work,

through the work,

then through the loop already on the hook to make a new loop.

This is how to hold a crochet hook. It may seem complex at first but it doesn’t take long to pick up and it works!

Dorothy Russell