You've got all the gear, you've learned how to do single crochet, double crochet and so on... And now you want to create something concrete in crochet. For my part, I had started with simple achievements, in order to practice. You see the very useless stuff like granny square, triangular, doilies what...
I also advise you to practice on small projects.
When I took up crochet again, a few years ago, I bought a book to have the patterns for these small creations. However, today you can easily find free patterns on the Internet and especially on Pinterest . Besides, do not hesitate to take a look on my Pinterest , I have created tables grouping patterns of shapes and crochet patterns.
Well ok, I want to create a crochet butterfly!!! And I come across this, WTF?! haha
So yes in general you are likely to come across this kind of bosses. But, to know, there are 3 types of crochet pattern:
Diagrams / Charts
Annotations
Texts
Charts
They are the most common in your searches and there are quite a few free ones.
The advantage is that they are very talkative. You have a direct preview of the final rendering and you see how to work your stitches.
The trick, of course, is that you have to know what the different symbols stand for.
If at first you have trouble, keep the correspondence handy. But you will see, the symbols are very intuitive so easy to learn.
The inconvenience that there can sometimes be is that we do not really understand where to prick lol. Especially when you've just started and you're not used to it. But for the rest once again it is very clear!
Annotations
In this kind of pattern, you have to describe what you have to do row by row.
For example, you will have "row 1: ... " followed by the stitches to be made.
But what you have to achieve will not be written in sentence but just with abbreviations.
For a small simple square like this, we would have:
Row 1: 1 ch +3 ch; 2dc in 1st ch (3)
Row 2: ch 3; (2dc-ch1-2dc) in the same stitch; 1 dc (7)
...
So when you just have the explanations like that, and especially if they are not accompanied by photos or explanatory images, it can be complicated. Still on my example, I still made short sentences.
Sometimes, you really just have the statement of the stitches to be made AOUWTCH.
So: 1 +3 ml; (2dc-ch1-2dc); 1 db.
Yes, by convention when there are parentheses it means that it is a single pattern, so the 2 double crochets + 1 chain stitch + 2 double crochets are to be stitched into a single stitch of the previous row . So there is not even to specify it!
Also, why the 1+3 ml? In fact, the 3 ch correspond to our 1st double crochet, so we separate them into 1+3.
Then you can see at the end a number in brackets. This is the total number of stitches on your row. It allows you to do the accounts and check that you were not mistaken. It is very important, a realization is made to the mesh. So if you have an extra or less stitch, you have to undo everything, sorry.
Otherwise the same, you just have to know the meaning of the abbreviations but again nothing difficult.
Text
This is the format I use in my patterns.
In fact, you are guided from A to Z, we can not make it clearer lol.
This kind of pattern therefore translates into sentences. You will have a paragraph for each part. You will be able to read sentences such as "make 3 ch then prick in the 1st stitch and make a double crochet".
The downside is that actually you have a big pad lol. Of course, it is preferable that there are still photos in order to show what it must look like. It's not at the end of your hours of trouble that you have to realize that your thong looks more like a sock lol.
Ikki advice
The top of the top when you are a beginner is to combine pattern and tutorial. That's why I offer tutorial videos of a model and her pattern.
Thereafter of course, the pattern alone will suffice. And to go further, you can even make your own creations. But shh, I'll guide you down that path in a future post.
Explainations on my Youtube video: