Abbreviations and slang abound in the crochet/crafting world. Designers mostly use abbreviations and if you look at e.g. Instagram feeds you can easily get puzzled – especially if you’re new to both crochet and social media. So I decided to dedicate a page especially to explaining some of these crochet terms – and it also saves me from writing guidelines to the abbreviations used in my patterns in all my posts.
For some reason (which I haven’t researched yet, but one day will) there are different terms for the stitches in the UK and the US. I work in UK terms as this is where I live, but I can actually see the logic behind the US terms better when you look at what you actually do when making the stitch. As you can see below some of the stitches are called the same, but are different stitches, which can change the outcome of a pattern quite a bit if you get them mixed up! All my patterns are written out in UK terms unless otherwise stated. See here for a guide on how to make the stitches.
UK term abbreviations:
ss – slip stitch
st/sts – stitch/stitches
ch – chain
ch sp – chain space
dc – double crochet (US: single crochet)
htr – half treble crochet (US: half double crochet)
tr – treble crochet (US: double crochet)
dtr – double treble crochet (US: treble crochet)
trtr – trible treble crochet
US term abbreviations:
ss – slip stitch
st/sts – stitch/stitches
ch – chain
ch sp – chain space
sc – singe crochet
hdc – half double crochet
dc – double crochet
tr – treble crochet
dtr – double treble crochet
trtr – trible treble crochet
UK to US Terms:
dc: double crochet = US: single crochet (sc)
htr: half treble crochet = US: half double crochet (hdc)
tr: treble crochet = US: double crochet (dc)
dtr: double treble crochet = US: treble crochet (tr)
trtr: trible treble crochet =US: double treble crochet (dtr)
OTHER CROCHET/KNITTING TERMS OR SLANG:
Afghan: basically a blanket
Frog/frogging: to unravel or rip back what you have done
CAL: crochet along – a project by a group or designer which is released in stages and where people ‘crochet along’ with the releases
C2C: corner to corner crochet
FOTH: fresh off the hook
HOTH: hot off the hook
LYS: local or little yarn store
STASH: yarn collection – have seen it as “special treasure all secretly hidden”
TIA: thank you in advance
UFO: unfinished project
USO: unstarted project
WIP: work in progress
© Saraphir Legind
