Hello my name is Sarah-Jayne welcome to my channel today is going to be the first video in learning how to crochet for absolute beginners this series of videos is also good if you are already a crocheter and just need a refresher i'm going to be teaching you everything you need to know to get started so let's get stuck straight in in this episode you will learn what you need to begin how to prepare your yarn a slip knot and a chain stitch what you will need to begin in order to start the journey of learning how to crochet you will of course need a few tools so the first thing that you're going to need is your yarn I'm using this paintbox yarn in Simply Aran so I would recommend that you use an aran weight yarn or a DK which stands for double knits and then also when you're looking at your yarn have a look at the yarn label and it will tell you what size crochet hook you will need so on this particular one it tells you to use a 5 millimeter hook it says 8 USA in the middle and then a 6 UK the reason it has different ones is because there are different terms depending on what terms you are using so UK or USA once you've established which size hook you need for your yarn you then want to go ahead and get your crochet hook ready I have a selection here because they do come in all different shapes and sizes this is an aluminium hook with a soft grip handle this is an acrylic hook this is the full aluminium crochet hook and then this is aluminium with a plastic handle but as I say there are many more on the market I would recommend that you start with something with an aluminium head to it so like this one for example or these two because it's much easier to work with at first you will also need a pair of scissors a darning needle to tie off your ends when we get to that stage stitch marker will come in really handy but is not necessarily important when you're just starting out I will leave links in the description box below of all the places where you can get any of these tools preparing your yarn you want to start by removing your yarn band and then you want to unravel some yarn so that it's nice and easy when you're working with it you can either choose to work from the center of the yarn ball or from the outside it's totally up to you but make sure that you unravel enough because this will help when it comes to your tension how to do the slipknot so to do a slipknot you want to take the end of your yarn and wrap it around your finger bring it forward to make an X pinch that in your hand that's holding the yarn grab the yarn that's attached to the ball and wrap it around your finger and again pinch in between your finger and thumb take the back loop and bring it over the front loop and there you have your slipknot how to do the chain stitch we're then going to take our crochet hook and insert it into the slip knot pull down on the attached piece of yarn and we are ready to start our chain so there are a few different ways to hold your hook I would recommend you try in different ways so that you can find a way that suits you best I hold mine like this which is called a knife hold just how you would hold a knife when eating there is also the pencil hold which is like this just like you would hold a pencil I'm going to do it the way that I hold it which is the knife hold you then want to get used to holding your yarn the way that I do this is I bring it around my little finger and around my pointer finger like so but again please play around with this because it will be different from person to person you then want to take your finger and thumb and you're going to pinch just underneath the slipknot and this creates your tension for your project so now I'm ready to create a chain you're going to wrap your yarn around the hook where we have created the tension you then want to grab the yarn with your crochet hook and bring your crochet hook towards you and through the loop that is a chain so I'll show you that again you want to go around the yarn and then grab the yarn and pull it through around grab the yarn and pull it through when you wrap your yarn around the hook this is called yarn over and will be used in many different techniques throughout crochet so yarn over and pull through the loop yarn over and pull through the loop so let's take a look at what we have done so far we have created a series of chains as you look at these chains they always look like these so we have one two three and four we're going to create 10 so that we can start to build some stitches on top of this in the next video so let's do some more yarn over pull through that's five yarn over pull through that's six notice how I'm moving my fingers up along the chain as I'm working this helps with your tension yarn over pull through seven yarn over pull through eight yarn over pull through nine and then one more yarn over pull through ten so we now have 10 chains so we're just going to look at this chain and get used to some of the terms which you see in crochet so as you see this V as we're looking at the chain you have a top loop and a bottom loop if I twist this round you see a series of bumps along the back and they are called the back bumps a couple of common mistakes are when you crochet too tight so when you pull through you are pulling too tight on your tension and you can't get your hook through in which case you just want to ease off another mistake is when you do it too loose and you pull on the hook and make your chain too so I would highly recommend that you practice this over and over until you get the technique correct and then we can move on to actually doing some stitches make sure that you check out the next video in this series we'll be learning how to double crochet which is