Day 6 :: Even Circle Increases

This is Day 6 of the 31 Days of Amigurumi. This 31 day series is full of how-to's for designing and creating your very own amigurumi. Whether you're a beginner at ami's or just need help on a certain technique, there's something here for everyone.

When I first started crocheting in the round I noticed that every round needed increases to make a circle. You know what I mean? The increases all end up in the same place and make a sort of hexagonal pinwheel design instead of a nice evenly round circle!

I hate that! Especially if I'm making an amigurumi doll, I want a nice shaped doll head and not a block head. Decreases, in particularly, can create a nasty looking seam, and that's undesirable! (Make sure you check out Day 7 for how to crochet an invisible decrease to get rid of that thick decrease stitch.)

Here is what I do to make that little pinwheel look go away.

General amigurumi patterns call for increase in the same places, like (sc 1, increase) and (sc 2, increase) and (sc 3, increase). You get the idea! This is a picture of 8 rounds of this normal circle pattern idea.

The hexagon shape is created because you are crocheting a sort of straight line with the single crochets and then the increases become like corners. See this picture? I put a dot where each increase is, so you can see the pinwheel I was talking about. The edges make a hexagon. No bueno!

Here is what my evenly distributed increases look like. See the nice circle shape?

Once again, I've marked all the increases with dots so you can see them. They aren't all in the straight lines like before. The nice circle is created by staggering the dots every other round. The line is the beginning of the rounds.

Here is what you do! It's going to be a little hard to understand, but I'll tell you first and then write the pattern out.

The first two rounds are worked as normal, 6 sc in ML and then inc in each stitch around. From there the rounds that have an odd number of crochets are worked with the sc's first and then the increases. So that's (sc 1, inc), or (sc 3, inc), or (sc 5, inc) and so on.

The even number crochets are worked a little differently. You want the increase to go over the middle stitch in the odd number of stitches. So the round that is usually (sc 2, inc) will be (inc, 2 sc). The round of (4 sc, inc) will be "sc, inc, (sc 4, inc) until the last 3 sts, 3 scs". I hope that made sense.

In case it's hard to understand, here is the written pattern for a few rounds. Hopefully you'll start to see the pattern.

Of course you will need a stitch marker to mark your rounds.
Rnd 1: make ML, sc 6 into loop (pull the loop tight)
Rnd 2: inc in each stitch around
Rnd 3: (sc, inc) around
Rnd 4: (inc,sc 2) around
Rnd 5: (sc 3, inc) around
Rnd 6: sc, inc, (sc 4, inc) until the last 3 sts, 3 sc
Rnd 7: (sc 5, inc) around
Rnd 8: sc 2, inc, (sc 6, inc) until the last 4 sts, 4 sc
Rnd 9: (sc 7, inc) around
Rnd 10: sc 3, inc, (sc 8 inc) until the last 5 sts, 5 sc
Rnd 11: (sc 9, inc) around
Rnd 12: sc 4, inc, (sc 10 inc) until the last 6 sts, 6 sc

Ok, can you see the pattern? This is just 12 rounds, and you may not need this many rounds for an amigurumi, but if you do then you should be able to see how they are worked. That's all there is to it though!

If you have any questions or don't understand anything then please feel free to leave a comment! I will try my best to answer them. Tomorrow we will talk about the invisible decrease. See you then!

Happy crocheting,
~Chassity O.