Increasing and decreasing · Easy
Half double crochet decrease
To decrease in half double crochet (UK half treble), take the yarn over and pull up a loop in each of the next two stitches, then draw the yarn through every loop on the hook at once. Two stitches become one, and the row has one stitch fewer. Patterns write it hdc2tog.
How to work it
Pull up a loop in the second stitch
Keep those three loops on the hook. Take the yarn over the hook once more and push the hook into the stitch after that one. Take the yarn over and pull up a loop. Now there are five loops on the hook.
Pull through all five
Take the yarn over the hook and draw it through all five loops in one pull. One loop is left on the hook. The two stitches share one top.
At a glance
- Also called
- hdc2tog, hdc dec, half double crochet two together
- Used for
- making a piece narrower, to shape it; closing in rounds worked in half double crochet
- Abbreviation
- hdc2tog
- Also written
- hdc dec
- In UK terms
- half treble two together (htr2tog)
- Counts as
- One stitch
- What it uses
- The next two stitches of the row below
- Loops before the last pull
- Five in the usual version, four in the lighter one
Five loops is the usual way, and it is what a pattern means by hdc2tog when it says nothing more. All that yarn in one place makes the decrease a little thicker than the stitches beside it.
A lighter version leaves out the second yarn over. Work step 1 as written, then push the hook straight into the next stitch and pull up a loop: there are four loops on the hook, not five. Makers finish it in two ways. Some take the yarn over and draw it through all four loops. Others pull that last loop straight on through the three loops that were already on the hook, with no new yarn over. Both are ways to make the decrease less thick.
The same moves work over three stitches, written hdc3tog: a yarn over and a loop in each stitch, then one pull through every loop on the hook. The decrease in double crochet (UK treble), dc2tog, follows the same idea with one more pull in each stitch.
When it goes wrong
- The decrease makes a small bump.
- That is the extra yarn of the five-loop version. Use the lighter version above, or the invisible decrease below.
- My row has as many stitches as before.
- The first stitch was finished before the second was begun. After step 1, keep all three loops on the hook and go on to the next stitch.
- Loops are left on the hook after the last pull.
- The last pull goes through every loop at once: all five in the usual version, all four in the lighter one.
Left-handed
The pictures show the hook held in the right hand. For the left hand, read each picture as its mirror image.
Variations
- Invisible half double crochet decrease. Take the yarn over the hook, then push the hook through the front loop only of the next stitch and, without a new yarn over, through the front loop only of the stitch after it. Take the yarn over and pull through those two front loops, which leaves three loops on the hook. Take the yarn over and pull through all three.
Questions
- How many loops are on the hook in hdc2tog?
- Five, just before the last pull: the loop you began with, and a yarn over and a pulled-up loop for each of the two stitches. The lighter version has four.
- What does hdc2tog mean?
- Half double crochet two together: two stitches of the row below are worked into one stitch, which takes one stitch off the row.
- What is hdc2tog in UK terms?
- Half treble two together, written htr2tog. The moves are the same.
- Which version should I use?
- The one the pattern describes in its notes. If it only says hdc2tog, the five-loop version is the usual meaning.