slip stitch

The slip stitch is a handy little stitch. It is generally used to join to the beginning of a round and can be used to make your way over to another point in your project without gaining any height. When you do this, however, it does make that short section a little bit thicker than the rest though it's usually not too noticeable if you are using the same color yarn or thread. If you are using a variegated yarn, you may be able to tell where you slip stitched.

Just what IS a slip stitch? A slip stitch is made by inserting your hook into a stitch, yarn over and draw those both loops. As said before, it does not add any height to your row or round.

How to make the Slip Stitch
note: pictures are full size, no need to click :-)

1) make a foundation chain (fch) of 5 chains	2) insert (ins) hook (hk) into first chain (ch) made and yarn over (yo)	3) draw yarn through ch and through loop (lp) on hk You have made a slip stitch (ss) Congratulations!
4) I have made 4 shells here and if I were making a granny square, I would ch 3 before joining, but since I'm showing you ss, I didn't make the ch-3 (yeah, yeah, I forgot chuckle)	5) insert hk into top ch of beg ch-3 (when you see a dash between the "ch" and the "3" that means it is something you did previously)	6) yarn over (yo)
7) draw lp through st	8) cont to draw through lp on hk you have joined your last stitch to your first stitch with a slip stitch	(9) Now let's pretend you need to get to that next space under the ch-3 you previously made Insert hk into the next double crochet (dc)
10) yo	11) draw through stitch (st) and lp on hk to finish your ss	12) Insert hk into the next dc and continue (cont) with steps 10 and 11 13) insert hk into the space (sp) created by the ch-3 of the previous round (rnd), yo and pull back through the sp and through the lp on hk

Now, if you've been paying attention you have also now learned a whole kaboodle of abbreviations which will stand you in good stead when you go to read a pattern. Here's what you learned. See if you can remember what each one means. If you can't go back through the text and find the one you can't remember.

You are now ready to tackle a real pattern. If the patterns use an abbreviation you don't know and the pattern doesn't give you a list, just refer to the Reading Patterns page. I've included the most common abbreviations there.