Here you’ll find some of the most common questions. Can’t find the answers you’re looking for? Get in touch and I’ll do my best to get back to you shortly.
How do I read your patterns?
Update: There’s now an entire post on this question!
Every creator writes their patterns a little differently. I’ve created a guide to help understand how to read patterns the way I write them. If you have any feedback on how to make these easier to read, please get in touch!
You can find the post by clicking here: https://53stitches.com/reading-patterns/
What’s the best pattern for absolute beginners?
Each of the patterns has a rating from 1 – 4 of how difficult I think it is, and you can filter by this rating on the pattern page. That means you can find the easiest patterns here.
That said, I would recommend the Luna and Artemis pattern if you’re just starting – they’re both worked in a single colour, so there aren’t any colour changes. And the pattern only has 4 stitches – increase, decrease, single crochet and a magic circle. These are the building blocks for a lot of amigurumi patterns, so if you can make one of these you’ll find there are a lot of other items you can make as well!
Please let me know if you found a pattern more or less difficult then the rating implied and I’ll update it – after all, I’ve become pretty familiar with my own patterns and that can make it a bit difficult to judge from an outside perspective. You can get in touch here.
Can I sell items made from your patterns?
Go ahead!
The only thing I ask is that you link to the original pattern in the listing for others to find.
Also, this applies to finished products only – you can’t reproduce or sell my patterns in any form.
What brand/weight of yarn do you use?
I use a number of different brands depending on what colours I need. If it’s a colour I purchased online, I’ll try to link to it in the pattern. But the majority of the colours and yarn I use are the Carnival Yarn Soft 8ply, which is my most readily available local yarn. I’m based in Australia, where the most common yarn weight is 8ply – which I believe is equivalent to DK (Double Knit) in the UK and the US.
I know a lot of people have used worsted weight yarn without issue as well, if that’s easier to find.
The yarn I use has a gauge of 22 stitches x 30 rows on a 10cm x 10xm square using 4.0mm needles, if that helps.
What hook size do you use?
3.00mm
Occasionally I will use a 3.5mm crochet hook, or if I’m crocheting something and I want it to be much larger than usual, I’ll use two strands of yarn and a 4.5mm hook.
How/when did you start crocheting?
I picked up crochet during my summer holidays in 2013. I had seem some fantastic knitted Robin and Nightwing dolls on Tumblr and thought I would try my hand at them – somehow got the knitting confused for crochet and here we are! For the first 3 months I was crocheting in the back loop only without realising, and all of my pieces were inside out and terribly misshapen.
Once I figured out what I was doing wrong, things improved pretty quickly.
I taught myself through the amazing resources available on YouTube and the great online community that makes so many patterns available for free.
