My tips and tricks for Tunisian Crochet
Color Changing Tips:
    I do things a little differently that most of the tutorials tell you when changing colors. I don’t do all the fancy stuff to tie in a new color, I just tie a knot on the string where I’m adding. I always worry about not tying the string that it might work its way out and now I have a hole in my blanket….not what I want. So…to make me feel comfortable about the yarn staying tied I tie it together.
    Another thing that I do is when I’m getting rid of a string/cutting it off I tie it together, usually making 2 knots, and if its 2 colors close together that I’m tying off I tie them to each other. I have to be careful not to tie to tight, it will make the blanket bunch if you do.
     I don’t carry yarn across any stitches, when the pattern has a color change I always add a new ball. It makes things interesting when you have a lot of color changes on a row, but I have found that it causes less bunching of the material. I just like the way the blanket goes together better if I don’t ever carry the yarn. The main thing I have noticed is I do have to stop every so ofter to untangle the balls of yarn.
Row Counting Shortcut:
    I also came up with a creative way to keep count of my rows without needing to count all my rows. The patterns that I create are large enough that you don’t want to have to keep counting and counting….. What I do is, when I reach certain rows I tie a small piece of yarn to the first stitch, that way all I have to count is the strings. I usually put a piece of string when I finish a page of my patterns, and on the patterns that have 46 rows per page I will put another string at the 23rd row. I have found this to be very helpful, especially since I almost always have several blankets going at once.
Keeping Works in Progress Together:
    I keep all my works in progress in a large plastic tub, so I can keep control of the balls. No more chasing little balls of yarn across the living room or worse an animal taking off with them. It’s also very cool for putting up your project, just drop all the yarn, the blanket, and pattern in the tub and put the lid on it. No fuss, no muss. It also keeps your yarn from getting dirty, no more spilled items on it.
     The other major thing that I learned to do because of how many different balls I will have going at once is to take your yarn and roll it into little balls. When I say little, I mean like golf ball size maybe a little larger. I will make some larger balls of the main color, but LOTS of little balls seem to work so much better for the way it do my blankets. I usually put all the little balls in separate wal-mart sacks, so I can keep track of them by color. It also makes clean up nice when used with the tub idea because you can drop your sacks into the tub and keep everything in one place.
Pattern Tricks:
    Couple of tricks on the pattern, my patterns are HUGE, because I love all the detail that I get and I always make bed sized blankets. So…what in the world do you do with a 30+ page pattern??? 3 Ring Binders!!! Lol. Since I do the complete pattern row by row, which means to work that pattern I usually have to look at 4 or more pages of graphs, I put them into 3 ring binders where I can flip the pages back and forth. When you finish the page just put it in the back of the book under the ones you haven’t done. After I have done the blanket I usually put the complete pattern into a brads folder. I also go through on each page and down the sides write in a row count, which helps you keep track of where you are in the pattern. I find it helps me, because you start the blanket at the bottom of the pattern that just seemed to work better for me.
Well those are my main tricks, I’m sure there’s more but this post is getting to be to long.
Re-cap of my tricks:
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When Changing colors I tie the new color to the one I’m using
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When cutting a color again I tie it to the string that will be left
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I never carry the yarn across, I add a new ball for every color change
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Use yarn tied to the first stitch of a row to keep track of what row you are on
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Keep all the balls currently attached to the blanket in a large tub, also good for keeping it when your not working on the project
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Make lots of little balls from each color
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Keep little balls separated by color in Wal-mart bags, then if you have a big enough tub you can keep everything in the tub when not working on the pattern
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3 ring binders to keep your pattern in order, and make it easier to read and put the pages you have completed in the back of the book.
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Write the number count of the rows on each side of the pattern from the last row to the first row, because you will crochet the blanket in that order
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And last but not least keep patterns your not working on in brad folders.
      What tricks do you know that you would like to share, I would love to hear about them. Well until next time happy crocheting, go make the world beautiful.