The Rise of AI in the Art World What do you think of this image? It's very pretty at first glance, isn't it? Does it make you immediately want to seek out the pattern to make them yourself? You're not alone. I took this image from a random page on Facebook that showed up on my newsfeed. I have no idea who originally made it. It's being shared by pages that appear to be run by bots, as the caption is always the exact same. So What's the Problem? The problem is these crochet parrots are not real. That is not real crochet. The photo is generated by AI. How can you tell? Firstly, they are too perfect. Creating crochet birds that could sit like that on a perch without falling over would be challenging. The direction of some of the stitches doesn't make sense. If you zoom in, you can see the stitches on the head especially do not look like crochet stitches. The yellow feathers on the left bird's head look like real feathers, which you wouldn't be able to rep
Crochet Basics Part 2
Hi, welcome back. This is part 2 of my crochet basics series introducing crochet and teaching you how to get started. In the first part we went over the basics of beginning a piece of crochet, the slipknot, the chain stitch, double crochet (single crochet in the US) and how to fasten off at the end. Today we're going to cover a couple of new stitches you can use for different textures. The half-treble and treble crochet stitches are fairly easy to work. These stitches are taller than the double crochet. You'll see what I mean.
Half-Treble Crochet (htr)
Half-treble is between double and treble crochet in height. It is worked very similarly to a double crochet, the difference is you wrap the yarn around your hook before pushing it into the next stitch, then you pull the yarn through, pulling up another loop. This leaves three loops on your hook instead of two. You wrap the yarn around the hook again and pull it through all three loops together. That's how you make a half-treble. See below for a video guide. Remember, chain 1 at the start of each row for this stitch but don't count this as a stitch.
Treble Crochet (tr)
Treble is made very much like a half-treble, however, once you have three loops on your hook, you yarn over, and pull through the first 2 loops on your hook, then yarn over again and pull through the 2 loops remaining on your hook. This gives you a taller stitch again. When this is worked in a straight line, you will find little gaps between each stitch - that's normal. The treble crochet is the main stitch used in granny squares and other granny type patterns, where you make 3 treble crochets in a little cluster. This look is very in-fashion at the moment, and it's easy to see why it's popular. We will cover making granny squares in a future tutorial. Remember to chain 2 at the start of a new row for this stitch, and don't count it as a stitch.
Double Treble Crochet (dtr)
Oh, yes, you can make the stitches even taller! A double treble is worked like a treble, but you yarn round the hook twice before you start the stitch, and pull through 2 loops at a time until you're done. You can go beyond double treble too, depending on how many times you wrap the yarn around the hook before you start. Generally these tall stitches are used for shaping or for a particular design feature or texture. Chain 3 at the start of a new row but do not count this as a stitch.
Slip stitch
You can make fabric with just slip stitches. This is what is known as single crochet in the UK. It makes a very dense fabric, much more like knitted fabric. You might be wondering why there's a difference in UK and US terminology, and it's probably this. Slip stitch means you're working with one loop on the hook, double crochet with 2 loops, treble crochet with 3, etc.
To Recap
So, we've covered most of the basic stitches now, and these are what form the foundation of most crochet patterns. I'll put some images below of how each stitch looks, each of these were made using a row of 10 stitches so you can see the difference in height. I've also added a video giving a quick recap of the stitches.
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| Chain Stitch |
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| Single Crochet/ Slip Stitch |
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| Double Crochet (Single Crochet US) |
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| Treble Crochet (Double Crochet US) |
For practice
To practice your basic stitches, a good way to do that is to make a rectangle, but each row use a different stitch. So chain 11, do a row of double crochet, a row of half-treble crochet, a row of treble crochet then start again. This is a good way to practice each stitch to get a feel for how to work them, and the finished fabric will let you see all the different textures and how each stitch looks in comparison to the others.
Thank you for following along with this. The next part we will look at colour work, covering how to change colours and we'll begin covering how to read a basic pattern as well. Don't panic about this, patterns can look wild at a glance, but once you figure out how to read them, I promise it becomes easier and I'm here to guide you through it. Remember, find me on social media for updates and behind the scenes, and follow the blog here to keep up with this series. Until next time!
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