My favourite way to construct things is in the round. I hate sewing with the blazing passion of a thousand flaming suns. Seriously, if give the choice between sewing pieces of stuff together vs cleaning out the little space between the oven and the counter – with a toothbrush, no less – I’d be in the bathroom gathering up a sacrificial toothbrush and handing you the darning needle.
In my hunt to work Tunisian crochet in the round, I have tried the double-ended hook method and failed miserably. It looks easy when other people do it, but then I try and my stuff gets all boogered up…and it works everything in a spiral anyway, which most of the time I do not want. I created my own way to work in the round that was kinda-sorta like Magic Loop Knitting because back in the day when I was a knitter, this is how I did all of my knitting in the round. What I came up with was bulky, not easy, and made me want to cry. I know that a couple of book publishers came up with a method for Tunisian crochet in the round and no matter what I did, when I followed their instructions to the letter, I got a spiral/shift in my work, which is not what I wanted. This is the reason that I have never put out a sock pattern in Tunisian crochet, even though I started out as a sock designer and blogger.
Then I was YouTubing one day, about two years ago and I discovered that Jennifer Hanson, “Stitch Diva”, had come up with a method for working in the round that was very much like Magic Loop Knitting, but not crazy and I didn’t want to cry when it was over. I loved it so much that as soon as I mastered it, I put down the method that I was working on and never looked back. I’m sharing some videos below, of Jennifer demonstrating her technique and me demonstrating it, because she is right handed and I’m left handed. I know it’s technically all the same but when you’re left handed sometimes it’s just so nice to see someone do it your way so you don’t have to flip everything around in your head.
