When I gave you Five Fine Reasons to Frog Your Crochet, fellow Crochet Spotter Cindi commented to ask about how to pull back crochet without stretching the yarn out further and also how to get rid of the kinks. In this tutorial, I am addressing the first part of the question – how to pull back without stretching the yarn out further. In the future, I will show you how to get rid of the kinks.

Previously it hadn’t occurred to me that we might need a photo tutorial about frogging, but then I remembered back to when I was a beginning crocheter and I wanted to soak up everything possible about the craft. (Well, I still want to learn absolutely everything about crochet, but some of it has become second nature to me.) While this tutorial may be very familiar to many of you, I hope that it will serve as good information for beginners and researchers. Also, please feel free to share your frogging tips in the comments!

You may mouse over the photos for left-handed views.

Step 1 Remove your hook from your work.

Step 2 Gently pull on the working yarn until your most recent stitch unravels.

Step 3 Taking care not to stretch the yarn, wind the unraveled yarn around the ball, skein, or cake of working yarn.

Continue in this manner until you have frogged back to your mistake or have unraveled the entire project.

What to do if you hit a snag.

There may be a point in your work where you’re happily frogging along and the yarn just stops. If this happens, you’ve hit a snag. This happens more often with yarns that are “fuzzy” or have what we call a “halo”. In this case, the snag occurred because I had already woven an end through the stitch.

If you do hit a snag (like I did), follow these steps.

Step 1 Examine the area where your yarn is stuck to see if you can find the root cause of the problem. Gently work out any knots. If the yarn has a halo, gently massage the area until the loose fibers have separated themselves.

Step 2 If necessary, snip the yarn and rejoin it on the ball. You can use a Russian Join or just leave it as is, and incorporate the new strand of yarn in as you work your next project with this yarn.

The key to not adding stretch to your reclaimed yarn is to wind around the ball as you go while remembering to keep your “tension” loose. Your yarn ball should look loose and easy. The individual strands should all appear to be about the same thickness. If they are looking thinner, you may be stretching the yarn.

Don’t stress out! Be happy. 🙂 You’re getting your yarn back! Now you’re empowered to rip back all of your crochet without stretching the yarn further. Please leave your frogging tips along with your thoughts, ideas and questions in the comment section below.

Tags: Caissa McClinton, frog, tutorial

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 28th, 2015 at 12:00 AM by Caissa "Cami" McClinton and is filed under Tutorials and Help. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.