Keeping Your Edges Straight (or: Why My First Scarf Was a Trapezoid)
Okay. You can chain, you can single crochet across a row, and you can turn at the end. That's genuinely most of the skill. This lesson is about the thing that goes wrong right around now, which is your edges creeping.
Here's what I mean by creeping. You start a row with, say, fifteen stitches. By row ten you've got seventeen. Nobody added anything on purpose. It just happens, a stitch at a time, and you don't notice until your rectangle has turned into a shape with no name.
My first project was a scarf. I did not know one single thing about counting stitches, because nobody had told me yet, which is exactly what I'm telling you now so you don't repeat my mistake. I just chained some amount, single crocheted across, turned, and went again, week after week in Relief Society, not paying attention to the edges at all. By the end that scarf was wide at one end and narrow at the other, a genuine trapezoid, with sides that curved instead of ran straight. I wore it all winter anyway and told anybody who asked that it was "modern." Nobody believed me. I didn't blame them.
So let's talk about how the edges actually creep, and how you stop it.
Where the extra stitches come from
Two spots cause almost all of it.
The first stitch of the row. When you turn and make your first single crochet, it's easy to work into the same stitch your turning chain is sitting on top of, plus that first actual stitch, and suddenly you've made two stitches where there should be one. This is far and away the most common leak.
The last stitch of the row. The opposite problem happens at the end. Your last stitch of the previous row and the turning chain from two rows back can look like separate stitches when they're really the same spot, and it's easy to either skip it entirely (row gets narrower) or work into it twice (row gets wider). Both happen. I've done both.
How to actually keep count
Here's what I do, and your mileage may vary, but this works:
- Count your starting chain before you do anything else. Lay it flat on the table, don't stretch it, and count the actual V-shaped bumps, not the loop still on your hook. (You already had a whole lesson on this. I'm not letting you skip it now.)
- After every single row, count your stitches across before you turn. Not every few rows. Every row. Yes, it's a little tedious at first. That tedium is the whole method. You're catching a two-stitch mistake before it becomes a twelve-stitch mistake.
- If your count is off, stop right there and look at both ends of the row. Nine times out of ten the problem is one of the two spots I just mentioned.
- If you can't find it, frog back a row or two and try again. I know I say this every lesson practically. I mean it every time. Pulling out three rows now takes you two minutes. Finding out six inches later that your scarf has feelings about being a trapezoid takes you a whole winter of "it's modern, actually."
A trick for the last stitch
If you keep missing that last stitch, here's a fix I like: before you turn, spread your row out flat on your lap or the table and physically look at the last two stitches, the real one and the turning chain sitting next to it. They should look like two separate little V's side by side. If you can see two V's, you're probably fine. If it looks like one lump, that's your trouble spot, and that's where extra or missing stitches are hiding.
A word on gauge, since we're on the subject of counting
You'll hear a lot of noise about gauge in crochet, and for a project like this, I'm going to be honest with you: it does not matter. If your rows come out a little wider or narrower than mine, so what. You are not making a fitted sweater. What we're working on right now is not "match my exact measurements," it's "keep your own count consistent from row to row." That's a different skill and it's the one that actually keeps your edges straight.
What to watch for at home
Grab your practice piece from last time, or start a fresh one, chain twelve to fifteen, and work about eight rows of single crochet. After every single row, before you turn, count your stitches out loud. If the number changes from what you started with, stop and go back and find it right there. Don't wait until row eight to notice you've got twenty-two.
Before next time: finish those eight rows keeping your count honest row by row, and if you catch yourself drifting off count partway through, that's not a failure, that's exactly the thing this lesson was for. Frog it back and go again.