Left-handed crochet

Learning from right-handed instructions

• Photos: view them in a mirror, or take a photo of the photo on your phone and flip it horizontally. Most photo editors have a flip button.
• Videos: many tutorials now have a mirrored version, and several video apps can mirror playback. Failing that, sit facing the screen and copy the movements as if the demonstrator were your reflection.
• Written instructions: read them as they are. Insert hook, yarn over, pull through: the words do not have a handedness.
• In-person teaching: sit opposite the teacher rather than beside them, so their hands are already your mirror.

The yarn over is the one thing to check: it goes from back to front over the hook, the same as for a right-hander, just done with the other hand. If your stitches look twisted, you are wrapping the other way.

What changes in patterns

Almost nothing, but the few things that do are worth knowing so they do not confuse you.

The last row is the one that trips people up. Left front and right front in a garment refer to the wearer's body, not to the direction you crochet, so they do not swap. What swaps is which edge of a piece the shaping sits on when you look at it on the table, and it swaps consistently, so the finished garment is correct.

Directional stitches

Some stitches lean: the slanted stitch in a textured blanket, cables, crossed stitches, crab stitch. Worked left-handed they lean the other way, and the piece looks like a mirror of the sample photo. That is not wrong; it is just mirrored, and in a symmetrical piece it is invisible. The only time it matters is when a right-handed and a left-handed person make pieces to be joined together, such as squares for one blanket. Agree in advance whose direction wins, and the other flips the chart.

Crab stitch and other backward stitches

Crab stitch (reverse single crochet) is worked backward: for a right-hander, left to right. For a left-hander, it is worked right to left. Any instruction that says to work in the opposite direction to usual means your opposite, not the writer's. The same applies to instructions like insert the hook from the left or lean the hook to the right in a stitch tutorial: swap them.

Hooks and tools

There is no such thing as a left-handed hook; a hook is symmetrical. Ergonomic handles are shaped for either hand. Scissors are the one tool worth buying left-handed, since right-handed blades push the yarn apart instead of cutting it when used in the left hand.

Where our patterns help

Every pattern in this shop uses written instructions that do not depend on direction, and any chart has a written version. Where a stitch tutorial in a pattern mentions direction, it says which way for each hand. If a pattern includes a video link, it notes whether a mirrored version exists. And if anything about a pattern is unclear for a left-hander, open a support ticket; it is exactly the kind of note we add to the next version.