 Hey guys, hello. Alright, we are going to do a crochet tutorial. I know that's different for my channel, huh? So I've gotten a lot of requests to do tutorials on these crocheted coasters and I have gone ahead and typed out the pattern. It'll be free, a free download and the link should be in the description below. If I should forget to put the link, one of you please remind me and I will stick it in there. It should also be on the freebies document in my Facebook group. So if you remember the Facebook group, you should be able to get the link for the download over there also. Alright, and it's been a while since I wrote a needlework pattern. I'm a tad rusty, so if there's any mistakes, somebody let me know. I don't think there was. It's a pretty simple pattern, but anyway. That being said, this is a really easy pattern. It's not a hard one and I'm going to show you if you've never crocheted before. I'm going to just really go over the basics. You need a ball of cotton yarn and now there's lots of different kinds of cotton yarn at the store. Frequently you're going to find Lily sugar and cream or peaches and cream at the store. Hobby Lobby has this brand by Crafter Secret. They all work about the same. That being said, I do prefer the sugar and cream. This yarn has a better, for lack of a better word, heft to it. It's although they seem to be the same weight yarn and they use the same crochet hook. This one's a little bit on the thin side and here's the coaster made with the Hobby Lobby yarn and it just seems to be, and you won't be able to tell us on camera, but it just seems to be a lighter weight coaster than this one. Now it works just fine. There really isn't any difference in the functionality of the coaster. This yarn was a little bit more challenging to crochet with because the yarn was constantly wanting to split. Now those of you who crochet know exactly what I'm talking about. That being said, I have a couple balls of it. It comes in some interesting colors and I'll be working with it anyway regardless. Today we're working with sugar and cream. Yeah, sugar and cream. This is a ball I've had for a while. I don't know if this color is still at the store. I found this in my stash. I didn't even know I had it and it is color number 23143 and I don't know what the name is, but it's this blue-green like variegated ocean-y colors. It doesn't have a color name, it just has a color number. When you're working with yarn, especially in this type of application, you want to...frequently you'll find here what I just did on this one. There will be a little piece of yarn sticking out the middle. That's actually not the place to start. That's actually the end and if you pull on it, can you see this tightening up right here? Because that's actually the end of the yarn. Take this and pull it out and then stick your finger into the center of the yarn ball. You want to pull your skeins out from the middle. It'll make your life a lot easier and sometimes you'll pull and you'll get a knot like that. That's okay. And then just pull these in over here. Just do this until you find that beginning piece of yarn and crochet from there. As you crochet, it's going to pull out of the center of the ball and it's going to make your life much easier and things will be less tangly. You'll thank me for that little tip later. I'm not going to use this one right now, so we're going to wind that back up. I'm using this one. I've been using that one. I've done three coasters. Each ball makes about four coasters, which is a great little set to give as a gift or to sell at a craft fair. You're also going to need an appropriate crochet hook. Most of these yarns will say on the label somewhere the recommended crochet hook and knitting needle size for that ball of yarn. The sugar and cream says it right here. For the crochet hook, which is what we're concerned about, you want to have an H or a 5mm crochet hook, which is what this is. The Hobby Lobby one, I believe, is the same. Reading glasses are helpful. Yes, they both take a size H yarn. Most of your cotton yarns of this type are going to take an H. You're also going to want a tapestry needle. It looks like this. It'll be in your needlework aisle with your yarn and crochet hooks. You're going to need a little pair of sharp scissors. We're going to start. I'm going to zoom in a little bit so you guys can see. We're going to start with a slip knot. You're going to make a loop and then reach in the loop and grab that end of yarn right there and pull. Stick your crochet hook in there and then pull to tighten right there like that. It's tight around the crochet hook. I'm going to hold my end coming out of the ball in my hand here. I'm going to hold the tail down with my thumb and middle finger. Then I'm going to chain three by taking the hook that's in the loop of yarn and reaching around and grabbing the yarn end coming out of the skein and pulling it through, which creates a new loop. Then we're going to do it again and again. Then we're going to take our crochet hook and we're going to stick it into this first chain that we made down here. I'm going to hold this little piece down here, this little loop thing that we're making. I'm going to grab the yarn and I'm going to pull it through both loops on the crochet hook until I've closed it. Now we have a loop of yarn. Then I'm going to chain two and I'm going to reach around and wrap the yarn around the hook. Take the end of the hook, stick it in that loop that we made. Pull more yarn through. Now we have three loops on the hook. Grab some new yarn, pull it through two of those loops. Now you have two loops on the hook. Then reach and grab some more yarn and pull it through the remaining two loops. You have one loop on the yarn. You just made your first double crochet and that chain two counts as your first double crochet. You have two. We need to do this and we need to have 12 double crochets in this loop of yarn. I'm going to do that. You'll notice as I'm doing this, I'm catching that initial cut edge of yarn in my stitches so that I don't have to weave it in later. I have this extra bit that's the cut end. You can either weave it in later with your tapestry needle or you can do what I'm doing. I'm just laying it around that initial chain three and capturing it in my stitches as I'm crocheting so I don't have to worry about later about weaving it in. I've lost track of how many that is. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Sometimes when you get to the end, you have to grab that initial chain two, grab the last double crochet that you made and just pull, push and pull so you make a little bit more room. So two more, 11. So we have three. When you start your double crochet, you have three on the hook. We're going to take a loop of yarn, pull it through two of them, and then take a loop of yarn and pull it through the last two and that creates your double crochet. Now we're going to take that was 12. Now we're going to go into the top of that first chain two that we made this stitch that's right here, right here. And we're going to put the crochet hook under that stitch. We're going to pull some yarn through that stitch and through the loop on our hook and that closes off our initial circle. I'm also going to take this cut end of yarn here and I'm going to pull it so that it closes that center. Yeah. Alright, now we want to chain two more stitches. Again, that counts as our first double crochet. We're going to go into that same place that the two chains are coming out of and we're going to double crochet right there and then we're going to do two double crochet in every stitch all the way around. That will give us a bigger circle, but it'll also help us keep it a flat circle by adding extra stitches. So it should look like that. I love the variegated yarn. Of course, this yarn comes in lots of solid colors too and you can of course do it in any color that suits your decor or suits your mood if you're doing them for a show. I have lots of wood furniture, so I have these all over my house. They don't take long to make. They're easy once you get the hang of the pattern they're easy to make and you can make them in front of the TV or that sort of thing. I've been known to take balls of cotton yarn in the crochet hook with me on road trips because I can do them in the car. So at this point, I've made a million of them now. When you get to the end, you have your two crochet, two chains here for your first double crochet. You have this extra funky stitch here. Put two double crochets in there. That counts as a stitch. Then we're going to go here, which is the top of our chain to put our hook in, pull our yarn through that one and the one on the hook to close it up. And again, chain two. Now in this first chain to again, we're going to double crochet. Oops, that was wrong. Wrap, put it in, grab some more. So you have three, then one, two, there you go. Now on this row, we are not going to add as many extra stitches. So in the next stitch, we're going to do one double crochet. And then we're going to go to the next stitch and put two. So you're going to do two double crochets in every other stitch all the way around. I do sometimes lose track of where I'm putting stitches and my count comes off funny at the end. And then I kind of have to fudge the edging. But I usually can make it work so nobody notices but me. So if that happens to you, don't feel bad. Frequently, you know, it happens because I'm talking to somebody, you know, like I'm doing right now on camera. And or my husband will ask me a question while I'm counting. And then I lose track of what I've done. Happens a lot more than I'd like to admit. Adding extra stitches but not adding them in every stitch will allow you to increase the size of your circle without having it be too curly and roughly and help it stay flat. I don't steam these or starch these or anything like that. I just use them as is when they're finished. Of course, if you're a needle worker and you know what I'm talking about as far as steaming and starching and that kind of stuff, you can do that. But I just use them as is. The cotton yard is a good choice for coasters because it's very absorbent. So it's going to absorb the liquid that comes off the glasses. I have lots of antique and vintage pieces of furniture and it seems to protect them very well from getting water rings. So every now and then you're going to want to like do that and play with it and flatten it. Lost track of where it was. Okay, so this is going to be a longer video because I don't really want to cut any of this out for those of you who aren't familiar with crocheting and don't really know how to crochet. You can slow the video down or pause it wherever you need to. And I do think if you guys would like, you can leave something in the comments below. We can do a live tutorial on creating these coasters if you would like. So here's that funky stitch right there. We're going to put a double crochet in there. Whoops. And again, we're going to seal this by going into that top of that first chain to grabbing some yarn, pulling it through there, pulling it through the stitch on the hook and we're all sealed. Now we're going to again start with a chain to double crochet in that same space where the chain to is coming out of. Now on this row, we're going to do even fewer extra stitches. So I want you to count one double crochet, two double crochet and sink one here, one in the next stitch and then in the third stitch, you're going to do two of them. So one, three. Now that third one is the one I have to put two in. There we go. So we're going to do that all the way around. And this is the last row before we do the edging. And there's a million ways I'm sure that you guys can come up with to do the edging on these. I like to keep it simple. So depending on my mood, I either do the scalloped edge or I do this like Pico edge, this here, this little bumpy edge on this one here. The directions for the coasters have the directions for both edgings. I'll just track where I was. Let's see. So I'm going to speed up a little bit here, but feel free if you guys need to to slow or pause the video and you know, watch how I'm doing these double crochets. They're not hard. They're really not. Pay attention to how I am holding the yarn in my hands. That really makes a big difference having control of the yarn. You want to have a firm tension, but it doesn't have to be too tight. But you don't want loose floppy stitches. Now if you're doing a lot of these, remember to stop and pause and take a break, flex your hands, flex your fingers. You can have some issues with, you know, cramping and it can aggravate your arthritis and that sort of thing. If you do too much of this, you know, over, you know, the same space of time. If you're if you're spending too much time without breaks, crocheting and doing this kind of needlework can be hard on your hands. And if you're an experienced crocheter, of course, you could do these in squares or other shapes. I I prefer the round circle. I think the round circle is interesting. And as you can see by my color selection I showed earlier, we'll zoom out here in a minute. I tend to pick blues and greens and earthy ocean colors. I do have a couple purples in here, a couple rainbows. Okay, we're nearing the end here. Whoops, of this round. So I just ended with a double crochet here. And we have our started double crochet over here. And there's two stitches in between. So we're going to do a double crochet in one, a double crochet in the other one. And that ends that row. So then we're going to go to the top of this chain that should beginning chain two, pull the yarn through there, pull the yarn through here, and that seals up that row. So now you would do the edging, whatever edging that you were attracted to doing. This is the one I've been doing lately, which is like the Pico little bumpy edge. You also can do a scalloped edge. I'm going to show you how to do the scallop on here first, then I'm going to rip it out. And I'm going to do the other one because I want to finish the set of four coasters. So if you were going to do the scalloped edge on your coasters, you would start again with a chain two in that same space where the chain two is coming out of. You would do six, that chain two again counts as a double crochet. So you would do six double crochet in that same space. Okay, so you have something like that. And then you would count one stitch, two stitch. And in that third stitch, do a single crochet. Single crochet is just one stitch on the hook. You're going to put the hook through that third stitch, grab the yarn. So you have two stitches on the hook and pull the yarn through both stitches. Then you would count one, two, three. In that third one, you'd do seven double crochet. And then again, you would count one, two, three and then do a single crochet. And you would do that all the way around your coaster and it would create the scalloped edge like on this one. When you end this row, you would end by doing a slip stitch right here again in the top of that beginning chain two so that it just looks like a seamless row all the way around of scallops. But on this one, on this particular set of coasters, we're not doing that. So let's pull this out. On this one, we're going to do this bumpy edge, the picot edge. And I'm going to actually start with a chain three. Then in that first same stitch where that's coming out of, I'm going to do a single crochet. Then I'm going to single crochet in the next four stitches, two, three, four. On the fourth one, I'm going to crochet chain three. Then I'm going to single crochet in that same stitch again. Then I'm going to count four single crochet. One, two, three, four. Chain three. My hands are getting tired. Can you tell? Single crochet in that same stitch. Then single crochet in the next four stitches. Chain three. Single crochet in that same stitch. And then you start to get this bumpy edge that's really cute. So you want to do that all the way around. So one, two, three, four. One, two, three, two, three, four. And yes, I really do count like this in my head while I'm crocheting. It crochet makes me pay, even though I'm familiar with this pattern, I really have to pay attention to what I'm doing. So for that reason, it gets me out of my head space, forces me to focus on something other than my anxiety, and helps me calm down. It's sort of meditative for me. And when I used to do lots of arts and craft shows, I used to sell lots of little crocheted things like this. Two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three. One, two, four. One, two, three. Now this is the end here. So this is the beginning one. This is the end, last one we just did. So one, two. And here's that weird stitch. Do one in there, three. And then we want to connect this to the beginning one. So on this, we're going to pull this up a little bit. So I have a place actually to stick the crochet hook in to the base of that first bump. I'm going to pull the string through, pull it through the loop on my hook. I'm going to pull it out like this, pull it tight. And then I'm going to cut the loop and pull the yarn out. Then I'm going to thread this little end through my yarn needle. And this is the backside. It's more bumpy than the other side is flatter. So on the backside, I'm going to take this yarn extra yarn and I'm going to weave it in to the stitches. There's no kind of rhyme or reason for this. You just want to weave it in so that it doesn't easily pull loose and you hide the raw edge of the yarn. And when I do it, I pull. So here's the little knot that we made. I do it so that I pull that knot so I can kind of hide that knot. And I can hide the knot inside some of the stitches. It pulls it down. And then I'm going to do it, I don't know, about an inch or so. You can go anyway. This is never going to be washed. So or it's not an item that would be worn. So you just really want to hide the end. If you were going to have it be a garment that's worn and washed, you would want to weave it in and out some of the stitches not straight across so that it's really locked in there. Okay, and then cut. And then you done. You have a set of four coasters. I'm going to zoom back out. So then you have a set of four coasters. They make a nice Christmas gift or other gift. They make a great item to sell at the craft shows. You really don't have enough yarn left on here to do any to do another coaster, maybe a small one. But what I do is I just wind up the leftover yarn and make a make a ball. I used to have a yarn winder, but I never used it. I don't really, I don't really do this that much anymore. So I don't didn't need it. I purged it. I think it actually went purged to my mom's house. So I'm not sure how good that was an idea. I think she ended up with a bunch of my knitting stuff. Okay, so I'm just going to keep going, you know, around itself in one direction and turn it the next direction and just keep doing that until you have a little baby ball. And this could be used for book binding. You could use it to crochet some other little embellishments. You could combine these to make coasters that are like a bunch of different colors. If you have a bunch of these little tiny balls of yarn, then, you know, you could make some, you know, have one coaster have a bunch of different kind of colors in it. You could also, of course, you know, use them in a blanket or something like that. They're just kind of leftovers. The sugar and cream balls are a bit bigger than the hobby lobby balls. The sugar and cream balls are about the same size as peaches and cream balls. I do believe those two brands are very similar yarns, but I believe they're made by different companies. You can get this cotton yarn at Hobby Lobby, Michaels, Joann's, Walmart has it. It's really available everywhere. It's really inexpensive. There we go. So you have a ball. Once you get the hang of crocheting, here's a set. Here's a set that I made the other day. And I just take a piece of the leftover yarn and tie four of them together. So I would just take this leftover yarn and just poke it through one of the coasters. Whoops. And when I'm selling these, this is what I do is I put them together in sets like this or gifting them, tie them together so they stay in sets of even numbers of coasters. I have this thing about even numbers of things like this anyway. And then just tie it in a bow. You of course could wrap them up in fancy packaging if you wanted. But this is the easy way. And then you have a couple sets of coasters to sell. You also can use, you know, the same kind of an idea. And these are, here's some of the balls from other, some of the other yarns. So this is leftover from one of the Hobby Lobby balls. And this is leftover from that sugar and cream ball. So you can see the different amount of yarns that are left over at the end. That being said, this is also a sugar and cream yarn. And it's just a different color. So each of the balls aren't all created equally. Some of them, because of the color, or I don't know what, they have different amounts of yarn in them. So I just save them all. I even save these because you know, you could put these into some gel medium on a canvas or something. They make an interesting texture. You can, you know, crochet with crochet thread and crochet some little embellishments. And these would be great on a journal cover. These are all things that I found that I crocheted about a million years ago. I forgot I had them. I used to sell this kind of thing in the gift shop. This actually somebody made for me. It's actually to cover an Easter egg. Isn't it cute? Doyleys and all kinds of things. I forgot I actually had these stars. Some of these have been starched. You can tell on this one how nice and flat and even it's laying and then like that star, how not, how all curly it is because this has been starched and ironed. And you can also take the idea of the circle and just keep going until you have a bigger circle like this one and create a dishcloth or a hot pad. So this is some ideas of what you can do with all of that old cotton crochet yarn you may have in a corner somewhere in your stash or maybe you want to just pick up crocheting and try your hand at it and make some of these as gifts. Either one is a good idea. Let me know in the comments below if you would like for me to do a live crochet tutorial on making these and we'll take it from there. Don't forget to do the most important thing. Besides supporting my channel if you can. Please like, share, and subscribe. Shop in my Etsy shop to support the channel or if you can't do that go over to my YouTube channel's main page and hit that fan funding button. Also go out and have a great day and do something nice for yourself of course because you deserve it. You know you do and I know you do too. All right that's it everybody. I'll talk to you later. Bye guys.