 Hi everyone, Tasha with Start Us Both Crochet. So today's tutorial is going to be how to crochet a bee. These little cute bees, this tutorial is going to go pretty fast, so feel free to pause the video. I wanted to show you how to make your own bee. Be creative! It goes over how to do the increases up to this point and then the decreases, how to add your eyes and also how to add the little smile and create the cute little wings. All right, so grab your hook and your yarn and let's get started on making these cute little bees. Hi everyone, Tasha with Start Us Both Crochet. Welcome to my channel. Today's tutorial will be how to crochet a bee. These bees are super cute. If you haven't subscribed, please do and hit the bell button. So what you'll need to start is three skeins of parfait chunky yarn in yellow, black and white, a 4.5 millimeter crochet hook, scissors, darting needle, stitch marker and plastic safety eyes. Okay, to start we're going to do a magic circle. If you're not familiar with these, I'll put a link in the description down below so you can learn how to do one in your own time. They're very easy to do. There's so many different ways to do them. They make it easy so that you can pull your circle tight when you're finished with your single crochet stitches. So for round one, we're going to do six single crochets and I recommend doing them kind of loose because we're using a small hook. So after you complete them, pull your ring tight, grab your stitch marker because we're going to mark the first stitch of each round. Round two, we're going to single crochet two into each stitch, which will give us 12 stitches total around and I'm going to mark the first stitch of my round with a stitch marker so I don't lose my place. So we're going to do one, two in each stitch and work that around. You can pause the video at any time you'd like. Remember to count your stitches. So I should have 12 on this round. So we're working up round three now. We're going to remove the stitch marker, do our first single crochet and then add our stitch marker back to that first stitch. That's really the only hard part about this pattern is moving that stitch marker. Round three, we're going to single crochet in the next and then do a single crochet increase in the next stitch. So it's two in the same stitch and again, we're going to move our stitch marker up for round four and then you should have 18 stitches on round three. In round four, we're doing single crochet in the next two and then do a single crochet increase and you do that six times for a total of 24 stitches. So there's what we have so far. Moving that stitch marker can be quirky. Sometimes it keeps falling for me. For round five with single crochet into the next three stitches and then do a single crochet increase in the stitch after that. What we're doing is increasing each round until we reached round nine and for round six we're going to single crochet into the next four stitches and then do an increase in the one after that. And you'll see a pattern there how we increase each round. Feel free to pause the video anytime you'd like to catch up. In round seven, we do a single crochet in the next five and then increase in the next. Keep moving your stitch marker up. So that you can keep track of your rounds and make sure you count your stitches at the end of each round. The written patterns on my blog if you have trouble with anything and I'll put the stitch counts for the rounds in the description below. So round eight, we do single crochet in the next six and then single crochet increase in the next stitch after that. And you repeat that six times for a total of 48 stitches. So keep working your round eight and then we're going to work up to round nine which is rounds nine through twelve will be the same number of stitches in each and one single crochet in each stitch. And at the end of round eight, you should have 48 stitches. Make sure you move your stitch marker up and then complete rounds nine through twelve and you can go ahead and pause the video. If you need to, I'm sure you need to because I'm going pretty fast, but I'm doing that so that you can pause and take your time to work. Now I'm going to go over how to make different sizes of your bee. So the size matters on how many rows you do to begin, how many increase rows. So if you want to make your bee smaller, all you need to do is stop your increases at a certain row. So say you want a three inch bee, you can stop your rows at row five and then just start using your regular single crochets without increasing and then once you reach a certain level, you'll start to decrease your rows. So you can see these two bees are different sizes. I did a smaller bee on the right and then a larger bee on the left and I just stopped increasing my rows and I made them shorter because I want to make a smaller bee. So continue on. If you're going to follow the pattern, you're going to do rows nine through twelve and single crochet in each stitch around until you get to round twelve. Once you reach round twelve, we're going to add the black yarn, pick up your yarn and then we're going to take out the loop and put it back through our two loops of our last stitch, add our yarn and then pull through and that's the best way to change colors using this because it kind of leaves a seamless color change. You're going to drop that yellow yarn. We're going to take our stitch marker out, do our first single crochet stitch of our new round with our black yarn and then reinsert that stitch marker so we don't lose our place again and pull those tight and then we'll work round 13, rounds 13 to 15 doing a single crochet in each round. It ends up going pretty fast. Once you start, I was surprised at how fast this bee finishes. Here's where you can make adjustments to your stripes. So if you want to do a bigger stripe, you can do more than three. I've done three rows for each of the stripes because I just liked the way that looked and three is a good number. But you can do four, you can do five, you can make them really thick, you can do whatever you want with your bee. So I'm speeding that up a little bit and then we're going to work rounds 16 to 18 and yellow 19 to 21 in black and then 22 to 24 back with the yellow yarn. So work those rounds up and you can pause the video and then I'm going to show you how to carry these colors. So carrying up your unworked yarn while you're doing it, switching out the colors is you're going to take it out of your loop again, go back through your two, drop the color you're working with over to the right, pick up the color that you're about to use and then pull it through to change the color. Just like we did before, which makes it a lot easier and you can see that it has a seamless join there much better. I've tried it a few different ways and it just didn't look right. That's the way I found look the best and then pull your tails tight and start your next round. So that's how you change colors and how you carry up the yarn, which makes it a lot easier than cutting it and then weaving it in tails or tying off the ends. So I just finished round 21 and I'm going to bring up my yellow yarn and work round 22, 23 and 24 using my yellow yarn. So here's where you can make a choice. You can continue on doing three more rows of the yellow to create a longer B or you can start your decrease rounds and make a smaller B, which is what I did. You were working from the tail to the tip, so the tail to the front of the head. So we increased and increased and then we'll start decreasing, but you can start decreasing at any row if you want to make your B smaller or shorter or have a flatter face is kind of what I did. So this is what I have so far and then we're going to show you how to do decrease rounds. So here's my decrease rounds. I went ahead and finished rounds 22 to 24 in yellow. Round 25, I'm going to do a single crochet in the next six stitches and then do a single crochet decrease. If you're not familiar with a decrease, this is how you do it. You insert your hook, pull up your yarn, insert your hook into the next stitch and pull up, then yarn over and pull through all three loops on your hook and you just did a single crochet decrease. So keep working around. We're going to do six single crochet and then do a single crochet decrease. Here's a decrease coming up and we're going to do a pull-up, insert in the next pull-up, yarn over and pull through all three. Now we're going to finish out that round and once we get around to the front, we're going to do round 26. We'll do a single crochet in the next five stitches and then do a single crochet decrease. So you can see how it goes down each round when you decrease. You'll work five, then four, then three, etc. But next round we're going to do a single crochet in the next stitch and then a single crochet decrease. We're going to go ahead and cut the black yarn because we don't need it anymore. Round 28, we're going to single crochet in the next two stitches and then do a single crochet decrease. I kind of decreased rapidly on my bee because I just wanted the face to be a little bit flatter. So round 29, we're going to single crochet into the next stitch and then do a decrease after that. Here's where you're going to count your stitches because between rounds 28 and 29, we're going to add our eyes. So you want to add your eye between round 28 and 29 and you want to space them about seven stitches apart. You can adjust that to however you'd like, but that's what I found looks good or it looked good for my size of the bee. It might be different for different sizes of the bee. Then you want to add your safety eye backing so that it doesn't come out and that it's safe for the kiddos. I'm going to add stuffing now because it's a good time to add stuffing before the hole gets too small and you add as much as you need. Feel around for it. See, see how it feels to you. If it feels stiff, it's better to do it where it's a little stiff and not so loose because things always seem to settle down as time goes on and you're going to have kids playing with it. So it's probably best to stuff it up pretty good. Then we're going to work on to round 30 with a single crochet in the next stitch and then a single crochet decrease six times and you want to work until your hole looks about this size and then we're going to sew it in. So round 31, you're going to single crochet decrease just as many times as you need to get your hole to a point where you're going to sew it up and close it. So grab your darning needle, thread it, and then we're just going to work through each stitch around until it closes up and you'll see that it closes up pretty fast. I just went in and out through each stitch and it didn't even take that much for it to close up. Pull it tight and then weave your tail in. I usually stick my needle through one side, pull it out, and then kind of pull it tight, trim it, and then loosen it up again so that the tail kind of gets sucked back inside and hides. Now we're going to add a smile. The Amigurumi smiles. This is what I like to do. You want to find a position that you like. I've positioned mine just a little bit below and to the left of my eye, so maybe a couple stitches in. So go ahead and insert your hook there. Then you're going to go horizontally across and come up on the other side just in about the same spot to make it even. Pull through and then you're going to leave a long tail on the other side. I left my tail is about, I don't know, I guess about four or five inches. After that you pull to the right, insert your hook back into your starting point, and then find the center between the two spaces, just a few stitches down below that. Gently pull it through and thread it back up and around the piece that's going horizontally. After that you want to insert your needle through and so it encloses, but just below where you did your exit. Then pull it on through and clip it like we did before. Now we're going to work the other tail. And I kind of, what I did was I hit it underneath the beginning stem of that smile to the right and then I gently pulled it through up through again like we did before. And here's where you can play around with it, loosen up the stitches a little bit and kind of make the smile more of a semi-circle instead of a V, but some people like the V. It's up to you. You can stick that back in there and just pull off of all the little fuzzies because this yarn likes to be fuzzy after a minute. There, your smile. So now we're on to the wings. The wings are easy. They're basically a single crochet or a half double crochet and you can make them any size you'd like. Depending on what size B you're making, you just work them in the round and then attach them to your B. So I did a single crochet. You can use different size hooks to make larger wings. And I started off with a magic circle just like we did the start of this B project. So you can single crochet or half double crochet. I used a single crochet for this tutorial and I'm going to work eight single crochet into my magic circle. So here's where you just join into the very first stitch. You don't need to use a stitch marker unless you want to. I didn't. I just did two stitches in each of the next stitch and I just continued doing that around. So if you're using a half double crochet, you work two half doubles in each stitch around until your wing gets to the size you want. So I think that's a good size for me. I like that you can count your stitches and when you make your second wing make sure it's the same size as your first wing. The other B, the first B I did, we're going to attach it there. The first B I did was a little bit bigger. I just use a whip stitch and attach the wings, but first you need to weave in all your tails. So grab your darning needle again and then weave in your starting tail. This yarn is very forgiving, which is great because it hides pretty easily and you can't really tell where your tail ends or where it begins. There I'm going to make that a smooth edge and then we're going to kind of bring in both edges of the wing to make it have a little bit of a pucker here at the base of it. So what I did was just go back and forth a few times until it brought in the circle of just a little bit. Then decide where you want to place your wings on your B. I placed them between the black bars and use a whip stitch to attach it. A whip stitch is where you just go in through the bottom and up through the top and you just kind of go around and around and around. You want to make it really secure and the whip stitch is nice because you can't really see where you're attaching it. It makes a pretty good line if you go in underneath your stitch. Then weave in your tail and cut it and you're good to go. So that's what we have so far. I used a spacing of about three stitches between the wings but you can do as wide as you want or as close together as you want. I've seen some bees out there that have the wings really super close together but I kind of liked the way this looked. So there we go. That's our wings. And that my friends is how to crochet a bee. So you can be creative and create the kind of bee you want. You can make different wing sizes. You can make different colors or however you want to do it. If you have any questions please leave them in the comments below. Thank you so much for being here and always remember to subscribe and hit the little bell button if you want to get notified of all my future video tutorials. Happy crocheting. Hope you guys have a great day.