Raffia makes the bags you see in shop windows - the ones that stand up on their own, keep a crisp brim, and look structured rather than floppy. It does that because it has almost no stretch and plenty of stiffness.
Those same two qualities are why the first hour with raffia is unpleasant. It splits, it catches on your hook, it is rough on your fingers, and your tension goes everywhere. Nearly all of that is fixable, and none of it is a sign you are doing it wrong.
Know which one you have bought
"Raffia" covers two quite different materials, and they behave differently.
Natural raffia comes from palm leaves. It is sold in loose hanks of uneven strands rather than neat balls, has a slightly papery feel, and varies in width along its length. It is beautiful and it is the more difficult of the two - strands are shorter, so you join more often, and the width variation makes even tension harder.
Paper yarn, often labelled raffia or raffia-effect, is paper twisted into a continuous even strand and wound into a ball. This is what most bag patterns mean. It is far more consistent, comes in long uninterrupted lengths, and behaves much more like ordinary yarn. If a pattern gives you a metreage rather than a weight, it is almost certainly this.
Our Textured Raffia Shopper Tote calls for about 400 m of raffia or paper yarn with a 4 mm hook, and either material works - the paper version will simply be an easier first project.
Use a pointed hook
This is the change that fixes most of the frustration.
Raffia is a flat, loosely twisted strand, and a hook with a rounded, blunt head will push into the middle of it and split it instead of going under it. You end up with half the strand on your hook and a stitch that looks shredded.
A hook with a sharper, more tapered head slides under the whole strand. If you own hooks from different makers, try them all on a swatch before committing - the difference is immediate and obvious. Metal beats plastic here, because raffia drags badly on plastic.
Size: go one down from what you would use for the same thickness of ordinary yarn. Raffia has no give, so a loose stitch stays loose forever, and a tight fabric is the whole point.
Hold it differently
The usual yarn-tensioning wrap around a finger will saw into your skin within twenty minutes, because raffia is rougher and does not slide.
Run it over the back of your hand or across two fingers rather than wrapping it tightly around one. You need less tension in your hand than usual anyway - the stiffness of the material does most of the work of keeping stitches even.
Take breaks. Everyone's hands ache at first, and it does get easier as the material softens with handling.
Joining a new strand
You cannot join raffia the way you join wool. There is no fuzz to felt together, and weaving ends into a stiff, dense fabric is difficult and shows.
Three options, in the order most people end up preferring them:
Sew the ends in with a sharp needle. Split the strand lengthways if it is thick, thread a large-eye needle, and run each half back through the stitches in different directions for an inch or two. Slowest, tidiest, most secure.
Knot and hide. A small square knot pushed to the inside of the work, ends trimmed to a quarter inch. Honest and quick. Because the fabric is dense, the knot does not travel. On a lined bag nobody will ever see it.
Overlap and work over. Lay the old and new strands along the top of the row and crochet over both for several stitches. Neat on the outside, but the doubled section is visibly thicker in a stiff material, so it works better on textured fabrics than smooth ones.
Plan your joins to fall at the start of a round or in an inconspicuous section rather than in the middle of a front panel.
What to expect from the fabric
It will look uneven while you work and better once it is finished. Raffia stitches settle into each other as the piece grows and gets handled.
It softens with use. A stiff, almost board-like bag will loosen into something with a bit of drape after a few weeks of being carried.
It holds its shape without help. No lining, no plastic canvas, no interfacing. This is the reason to put up with the material at all, and it is why raffia bags need none of the reinforcement covered in Why Crochet Bags Stretch.
Colours are limited compared with wool or acrylic, and the natural shades vary between dye lots more than you would expect. Buy all of it at once.
Finishing
Do not wet block raffia. Paper yarn is paper - soaking it weakens the strand and can leave it permanently limp and wrinkled.
Steam lightly from a distance if a piece needs persuading, hold it to shape, and let it cool completely before moving it. For a bag, stuff it with a towel while it cools so it sets around the shape you want.
Store raffia bags stuffed rather than folded. A crease in raffia is much more stubborn than a crease in wool.
Where to start
A flat-based tote is the right first raffia project. The shaping is simple, the material does the structural work, and mistakes in tension are largely hidden by texture. Our Textured Raffia Shopper Tote is advanced beginner, uses only chain, single crochet, slip stitch and double crochet plus one easy textured variation, and finishes at about 28 cm tall by 40 cm wide.
When you want something with more going on, the Woven Herringbone Raffia Tote is intermediate and teaches the herringbone technique step by step.
More in our bags and totes patterns, and if you are choosing a first project by difficulty, everything we rate as accessible is gathered in beginner friendly patterns.