Since we are all sitting at home right now I thought it would be a good time to work on a new skill. As I have gotten better at crocheting I have started to notice that when I would try to create a circle it wouldn’t be a circle. Where I would increase would create these lines and my circles would have points instead of being perfectly round. After some research on Pinterest and looking through some of my crochet books I found some great tips about how to fix this problem! To make a circle instead of a hexagon shape you want to stagger your increases. When making a circle or a half circle typically a pattern will instruct you to increase on the first steps or the last stitch of a set of stitches. For my patterns you typically work in sets of six. Here is an example from one of my patterns: Using Green Yarn, ch 2, sc 6 into second ch from hook R1: Inc in each sc (12 stitches) R2: *sc, inc* repeat x6 (18 sts) R3: *sc 2, inc* repeat x6 (24 sts) R4: *sc 3, inc* repeat x6 (30 sts) R5: *sc 4, inc* repeat x6 (36 sts) [See full pattern for Small Alien, I Am HERE] When you follow this pattern exactly you may notice some funny bumps where the increases are lined up. This keeps your circle from being super round and gives it almost hexagon edges. When your item is smaller the bumps are not as noticeable, but as your item gets larger these creases become more visible. And the tighter your stitches (like with Amigurumi) the more noticeable the bumps are. The best way to prevent this is to stagger your increases. So now you’re thinking to yourself, well why don’t you just put a link to these various places you have found this information instead of writing your own post? The reason is that everything I looked at ended here. They simply said stagger. And for me personally that was a daunting thought. What does staggering look like? Is it completely random? How will I be able to keep up with where I’m at? If you read the instructions “just stagger your increases” and you totally get it, good for you! You’ve probably been crocheting longer than me, and have a different style of learning than me. I, however, learn through examples and pictures. So I wanted to give the tools of examples and pictures for other people who learn like I do. So here we are going to do an example of how to stagger your increases. You can use any yarn and hook, I will be using Weight 4 yarn and a size 5mm hook in my example pictures. Here is the standard pattern for the circle: (don’t make this circle, just read the pattern) To start, ch 2, sc 6 into second ch from hook R1: Inc in each sc (12 stitches) R2: *sc, inc* repeat x6 (18 sts) R3: *sc 2, inc* repeat x6 (24 sts) R4: *sc 3, inc* repeat x6 (30 sts) R5: *sc 4, inc* repeat x6 (36 sts) R6: *sc 5, inc* repeat x6 (42 sts) R7: *sc 6, inc* repeat x6 (48 sts) R8:*sc 7, inc* repeat x6 (54 sts) R9:*sc 8, inc* repeat x6 (60 sts) So in each round you have six groups of stitches. For example, in R4, you have six groups of five stitches, three of them are by themselves and two of them are part of an increase. For the staggering you are just moving where that increase is within your group. And you move it to the same spot for the whole round. And ideally the increase won’t be near the increase from the previous round. Here is an example of how I would create the circle pattern above, but with staggering my increases. To start, ch 2, sc 6 into second ch from hook R1: Inc in each sc (12 stitches) R2: *sc, inc* repeat x6 (18 sts) R3: *sc 2, inc* repeat x6 (24 sts) I don’t start staggering until after this round R4: *sc, inc, sc, sc* repeat x6 (30 sts) R5: *sc 4, inc* repeat x6 (36 sts) R6: *sc, inc, sc, sc, sc, sc* repeat x6 (42 sts) R7: *sc, sc, sc, sc, inc, sc, sc* repeat x6 (48 sts) R8:*inc, sc 7* repeat x6 (54 sts) R9:*sc 4, inc, sc 4* repeat x6 (60 sts) And now you have a circle instead of a hexagon! Hopefully this short example was helpful to you and will make a difference in your future projects. I know staggering has really helped me! If you have any questions please send me a message on Instagram or Facebook, and if you aren’t already please follow me on Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest! Every like, comment, follow, and repin helps my small blog grow!