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| A green jellyfish with the final tentacle being constructed around yellow yarn used to mark chain stitches. |
A while back I watched this video trying varied cord making methods and it stuck it my mind. I spent quite a while this summer handmaking cordage out of corn husks and mulberry bark while out in the yard watching my dog chase squirrels. I’m starting to get ok at it. I still have no use case for the product but the process calms my seeky neurons. So I’ve been thinking about cords.
I also have a favorite amigurumi pattern, adapted from the book Crocheted Taxidermy, of jellyfish. 🪼 It’s a ball with a skirt and several long tendrils. The tendril/tentacle pattern I’ve done for years now is ch48, then start at the 3rd stitch, do 45 HDC back to the jellyfish base.
3 important points:
• the tentacles look better if I HDC into the vertical back loop of the chain stitch instead of into the ❤️ part. This way there’s a knit stitch on each edge. However, this makes the process incredibly tedious.
• Every so often I would get a weird divot in my tentacle.
• I was inspired by yet another video! It’s about using spare bits of yarn as stitch markers.
I started using yarn markers to catch every 10 stitches in my tentacle’s 48 chain. Then I realized it would decrease the tedium & difficulty of getting a HDC hooked into the rear loop to mark every stitch as I go. It’s actually faster to add the yarn in than not, because I don’t pull the chain out of shape, I have better tension on the chain, I can easily find each stitch, and it’s harder to pull the upcoming loop too tight to get the hook thru while wrestling the crochet hook thru the HDC.
Then I was doing a jellyfish and ran out of yarn halfway up my last tentacle 😖. I also realized the occasional divot I got in my tentacles (which I would pull out & redo), happened when I pulled the first YO thru all the stitches instead of doing a 2nd YO after pulling one loop thru the chain. So I thought I could be thrifty and get a whole tentacle by skipping the 2nd YO of the HDC. It required rotating the hook during each stitch to get it thru the 2nd to last loop on the hook. But instead of being a flat stitch with knit Vs/ ♥️s on either side, the tentacle was a squarish round cord.
In this manner I stumbled on a pretty good crocheted cord!
I call it a quarter double crochet chain stitch (QDCC) but it likely has another name. I don’t know how to look it up. Let me know what it’s called by other people, if you do know!
The cord looks round/square with 3 knit stitch looking sides & 1 ~H side (2Vs up, 1V down). It’s pleasing looking to me. It has some stretch, but it comes to a hard limit. The crochet goes 2 ways so there’s at least 1 redundancy, if you need it to be reliable, unlike a plain chain or a single direction stack of crochet. (And I would guess if it’s lightly felted, less likely to unwind if there is a break.)
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Here’s how to make my pretty cord:
Supplies:
-chosen yarn
-crochet hook sized for that yarn. (The yarn I measured for this post recommended a 5mm hook but I used a 4mm to keep the jellyfish body from having gaps the stuffing peeks thru. A smaller hook means less stretch.)
- an extra piece of yarn of equal or slightly thicker weight, about 6X the desired cord length. (optional, but it helps with gauge, counting, & stitch placement) OR a crochet hook 1 size larger than the main.
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Cord Pattern: with extra yarn method use the main hook to crochet a chain 10% longer than desired cord, with the extra yarn marking each back loop. (See ** below) Without the extra yarn, use the larger crochet hook to make a chain 10% longer than desired cord length.
Return: 1st stitch: Ch 2 then SC in 2nd stitch from hook. Remaining N-1 stitches are “quarter double crochet chain stitch” back to starting stitch, working in the back loop only, not the V stitch where
QDCC= YO, (2 loops on hook) & put hook thru back loop (marked with yarn), YO and pull thru chain loop, then twist the hook to the back of the chain and continue pulling it thru the 2 loops on the hook. (If it’s not twisted, it catches on the initial YO loop.).
That’s it! Do it a couple hundred more times & you have a nice cord! A Ch-45 (+2) with 44 QDCC return stitches using “sport weight” yarn with a 4mm hook makes 8” of unstretched cord and 9.5” of stretched cord. Pulling thru the back loop instead of one of the “knit” V legs makes the chain shorter as stitches are added, hence starting it ~10% long. 9.5/8 = 1.19 or 19% ≈20% stretch from relaxed if you need to cinch the cord.
End: At desired cord length, cut a 6+” tail and pull the end thru the last loop. For redundancy, weave/sew the yarn tail(s) thru each of the last 6 stitches to lock them too, then hide the tails down the middle of the cord, adding at least one loop around a piece of yarn at full stretch before finishing hiding it. (For the jellyfish, I anchor it on either side with a 1 loop or 2 loop single crochet plus a chain stitch, then chain to next tentacle location & repeat. Then weave my one end into stuffed body in a couple directions. I hate weaving in ends so I sew as little as possible if I can crochet in one piece instead.) Or tie the 2 tails into a knot and have 2 strings at the end, or do that and add a couple extra pieces of yarn via clove hitch/ latch hook to give it a tassel.
It’s trickier to extend the cord length (other reason to add 10% up front) but easy to make it shorter on the stop/start side of the cord . Options to extend it are to undo & redo the whole thing, make the extension piece, looping the turning chain of the extension thru the turning chain of the original, or chain in the opposite direction from the initial starting point, work in the opposite direction and cope with the weird change and the bulk of weaving in more ends.
(** extra details on the yarn marking: During the chain stitch, pull up a loop, then flop the marker yarn over the new feed yarn behind the hook, then pull up next stitch over that yarn. Flop the extra yarn back over the feed yarn line, leaving a visible bend, then pull up next loop over the extra yarn. Keep the marking yarn loose. It will look like a loose series if Ss behind the knit stitch looking side of the chain.
For longer chains, I find it’s easiest to keep the marking yarn up and forward. For shorter lengths I hold it with my lips, for longer, I stuff it behind my shirt collar. Catch a small tail at the first stitch, then flop it back and forth with each stitch. Every 10 or 20 stitches you can add a stitch marker or make a double loop with the marker yarn.
When doing the QDCC return, the hook follows the marking yarn to secure the stitches. If the loop’s tight, pull the marking yarn out just before each stitch. If there’s room, leave the yarn in, hook next to it being careful not to stab thru it, and pull it out at the end by scrunching up the cord and yanking, or using a hook to unwind it more gracefully. The marking yarn can be reused if you don’t damage it. Or multiple shorter pieces can be used, which might help with removal and stitch counting in longer cords. It sounds harder to use the yarn marker than not, but it keeps the chain straighter and the stitches easier to find. So much so that the effort of marking, and the space that adds, improves the tension of the chain & makes it so much easier to place stitches that the time is wholly made up.)
