I always forget how much I dislike the crab stitch. It, well, it makes me crabby. I don’t do it very often, so I usually forget exactly how it goes, and then I have to look it up and somehow, while I am usually pretty good at following instructions, it always takes a few many tries.
And I find this frustrating. I mean, I’m 4/5ths of the way through a pattern in German (which I don’t speak) and most of the stitches have been fun challenges. The mistakes on Ergane thus far have been self-inflicted (not skipping the well charted correct number of stitches and adding 50% more to my cowl) or bad luck (that massive tangle of yarn).
But the crab stitch was stupidly annoyingly challenging. I finally figured out why. If you look it up (in English anyways), the description says “just like a single crochet, but backwards, going left to right instead of right to left”. This is a lie. It’s almost but definitely not true, the sneakiest kind of lie.
In this first picture are several different single crochets. Left to right (divided by stitch markers) are single crochet after turning the work, single crochet done left handed* (which naturally moves you left to right) and single crochet done backwards right handed. You’ll notice the last two are exactly the same, except my tension sucks going backwards with my right hand.
None of them are the crab stitch. Though, they do clearly illustrate why turning the work to crochet the other way is not the same as crocheting backwards (or left handed). The stitches sit on the other side of the work.
So how are they NOT the crab stitch when the definition says “single crochet but backwards”? Turns out because they really mean “single crochet, but backwards after twisting your working loop”. Which apparently comes so naturally to everybody else that nobody mentions it. I finally buckled and watched a video, and all was clear.
Below are, on the left and the right, two slightly different crab stitches. In the middle is my failed attempt to get the same result but using my left hand and going forwards (did I mention I hate this backwards thing?) but I couldn’t get the right amount of twist in the right places.
As you can see, the crab stitch does not look like my backwards single crochet. It actually creates the “coiled” look promised. The one on the left was a bit tidier, so it’s what I went with.
How did I get there? I took pictures to try to disect this…
1 – This is the hook inserted in it’s usual way and the working loop on the hook is untwisted.
2 – Swing the head of the hook towards you, down, and then back up away from you. You’ll notice that there is now a twist in the loop. Normally, as you execute this meneuver, you would also insert it into the stitch to the right. I left it out for clarity. This is where I was going wrong – I didn’t make this little swoop with my hook and went straight back to the stitch I wanted.
3 – This point is more optional, but gave me a tidier stitch. You mileage may vary. After pushing the hook through the stitch, I positioned it hook side down and scooped up the yarn, twisting as I did, leading to…
4 – My loop twisted around the hook. This happened simultaneaously with pulling my hook back through the stitch, but I’ve shown it “before” for an easier photo.
5 – Yarn over again and pull through both loops.
I suspect I spent way too much time on this, but next time I’ll have my own post with my pictures and what works for me to come back to. I also clearly proved to my stubborn self that there was no way around this stitch – nothing else that gave the same look.
And it does look rather pretty, doesn’t it?
P. S. if you don’t agree, or aren’t sure that’s actually a crab stitch, I do not want to hear it right now.
*I am naturally a lefty, but close enough to ambidextrous that I learned to crochet and knit right handed.