Is it knitting? Is it crochet? The answer is yes!
Arm knitting has been dominating the web in the craft world and I’ve seen several attempts at it’s crochet equivalent. Because of crochet’s “one active loop” nature, arm-crocheting projects quickly turn into something more like hand crochet and the ease and novelty of using your arms is lost. Until now! Meet Tunisian Crochet. The knitting/crochet hybrid cousin of classic crochet. While working this method, you create stitches that hang from your arm just like arm-knitting. But you use one arm like one hook in crochet. Interested in giving it a try? Check out the photo tutorial below. Grab one strand of your favorite super bulky weight yarn. I used Red Heart Grande
Begin by making a slip knot and chaining 26 by reaching into the loop, grabbing your yarn and pulling up another loop until you’ve made 26 and place the last loop on your main wrist (your arm with the stitches on it is the “main” arm and your other we’ll call the “helper”).
Working in the little bumps on the back of your chain, skip the first two chains from your wrist, reach into the 3rd chain with your helper hand and pull up a loop. Place the loop on your main wrist. Do this for every chain you made.
Now that you have all your stitches on your main arm, it’s time to start working back down to one loop. To do this, grab your working yarn in your main hand and pull the first stitch off your wrist with your helper hand, pulling up a new loop in your main hand.
Place the new loop back on your main arm. Now, grabbing your working yarn in your main hand, pull two stitches off your wrist with your helper hand.
Pull up a new loop with your main hand and place it on your main wrist.
Continue this way, pulling two stitches off your wrist and pulling up one new loop and placing it back on your wrist.
You’ll begin to notice you’re creating stitches with a distinct front bar. This is where you’ll be working into on the next row.
When you get down to the last stitch, reach under the 2nd bar with your main hand and pull up a loop. Place the loop on your main wrist. Do this for every bar you see on your work. Don’t miss the very last bar, that can be small and hard to see.
To complete this row, continue as you did before. Pulling off one stitch and pulling up one loop for the first stitch. Then pulling off two loops and pulling up one for the rest of the loops on your arm.
Complete this action 3 more times, forward and back, until you have 4 rows and one loop left on your main wrist.
To bind off, begin working like a normal forward pass, working into the 2nd bar. But pull your left loop through the loop on your wrist. Continue across all bars of the row, pulling up a loop and pulling it through the right loop. Pull the last loop tight.
The other side is the right side of your work!
Lastly, we’ll seam the short side together to complete the infinity cowl!
Working into the small horizontal loops and not the long vertical loops,seam your cowl together with the same color yarn you crocheted with. I used a contrasting yarn above so you can see how I laced it together.
Tie off your ends and hide them in your work.
And your done! My cowl took 15 mins and I made another one in 10 minutes once I had the technique down!
I hope you enjoyed this Arm Tunisian Crochet tutorial and pattern. I can’t wait to see what you make! Feel free to share your projects with me on Ravelry or Instagram