Why French patterns look so cryptic
A French crochet pattern is written in short abbreviations, with hardly a full word: "Tour 3 : *2 ms, aug ; répéter de * tout le tour". If you have only ever read English patterns, it looks like a code. It is not: the structure is the same as in English, with a stitch, a number and a repeat, and only the words change. Once you know a handful of them, you can follow a pattern from a French designer, and there are many of them, especially for amigurumi.
Three things make it tricky. First, the abbreviations themselves, which do not look like ours: the single crochet is "ms" (maille serrée), not "sc". Second, the American and British conventions, which give one and the same word two different meanings. Third, the rows and rounds: French patterns speak of "tours" for rounds, and a number in brackets at the end gives the stitch count you should have. This page covers all three.
The French abbreviations to know
The table below lists every French abbreviation of our glossary with its English equivalent. It is generated from the same glossary as the reader’s tooltips, so an equivalent cannot differ from one place to another. The English meaning is the American one when the two conventions differ.
| Abbreviation | In English |
|---|---|
ms | single crochet |
db | half double crochet |
mc | slip stitch |
ml | chain stitch |
aug | increase |
dim | decrease |
cercle magique | magic ring |
Reading a typical row, word by word
Take the row in the tool above: "Tour 1 : 6 ms dans un cercle magique, 2 aug dans chaque maille". Read from left to right, it says:
- "Tour 1": round number 1. The colon after the number is a French typographic habit, not a sign.
- "6 ms dans un cercle magique": 6 single crochets in a magic ring.
- "2 aug dans chaque maille": 2 increases in each stitch. French patterns often give the number of increases first, then the stitch they go into.
The traps: bride, ml, aug and the two conventions
The main trap is that French stitch names do not map one to one onto British ones. A French "bride" is a stitch worked with one yarn over, which is a double crochet in American terms and a treble in British terms. If you read a French pattern with British habits, your work comes out a stitch too tall or too short. Decide once which convention you follow, and stay with it for the whole pattern.
Two more traps are worth knowing. "ml" (maille en l’air) is a chain, and a French pattern says how many to make before turning, exactly as an English one does. "aug" and "dim" are an increase and a decrease: "2 aug" means two increases, not two stitches worked into one. When in doubt, count your stitches against the number in brackets at the end of the round.
Converting a whole pattern
For a single row, the tool above is enough. For a whole pattern, or to move from one convention to the other without mixing up the stitch heights, use the US ↔ UK converter: it rewrites the abbreviations and adds the equivalent of the hook sizes.
Then read it in large type, in the reader
Reading a translated row on a screen is one thing; following a forty-row pattern with a hook in your hand is another. The "Open in the reader" button sends your text to the reader: one instruction at a time, in very large type, with a row counter, a repeat counter and a timer. Every abbreviation stays underlined: hover or tap for its definition, and the "Abbreviations written out" switch writes everything in plain words, as it does here.