Crochet tutorial: breaking yarn with sc

Breaking yarn with a single crochet

(... or slip stitch if you're stateside)

On several occasions in my crochet patterns I'll write something like "...3 dc, 1 sc.  Break yarn."  (In US terms, this would be 3 sc, 1 slst.)  From now on, I'm going to talk UK crochet terms.

This is how I like to perform this manoeuvre.  Apologies apply with regard to my tatty hands and nasty cheap yarn.  I'm not a manicure sort of girl: you can't crochet while the polish is drying.

1)  We're going to make the single crochet.  Insert your hook into the stitch.  Wrap your yarn around the throat of the hook (not shown).

2)  Pull through a loop, and keep pulling that loop through the loop already on your hook.  (The photograph shows the point just before you do that: the short instance where momentarily there are two loops on your hook.)

3)  You've made your single crochet; I like to stick a safety pin in this stitch to mark it so that I can tell it's a real stitch on the next round when I come to work it.  Time to bind off: cut the yarn leaving a tail a few inches long.

4)  Wrap your yarn over the throat of your hook and pull the tail right the way through the loop on your hook.

5)  Give the tail a short tug to tighten it.  Done!