Reading a Row and Doing What It Says
Okay. You know the abbreviations now — sc, ch, st, and so on. That's your alphabet. This lesson is where we put them into words and actually read a pattern line the way it's written, left to right, and do exactly what it says.
Here's a typical row, the kind you'll see in any washcloth pattern:
Row 4: Ch 1, sc in each st across, turn. (20 sc)
Let's take that apart piece by piece, because that's the whole skill. Not magic, just translation.
"Ch 1" — chain one. This is your turning chain. It gets you up to height so your next stitch sits level. For single crochet it doesn't count as a stitch of its own, which trips people up, so I'm telling you now: that chain one is just a step stool. Don't work into it later.
"sc in each st across" — single crochet into every single stitch, one after another, all the way to the end of the row. Not some of them. Not the ones that look easy. Each one.
"turn" — flip your work over like we practiced. New row starts.
"(20 sc)" — that number in parentheses at the end is the pattern checking your work for you. It's telling you that when you finish this row, you should have twenty single crochet stitches sitting there. Count them. If you've got eighteen, you dropped two somewhere. If you've got twenty-two, you added some without meaning to. Either way, that's useful information, not a scolding.
That's really the whole system. A pattern is just a row of instructions read in order, and your job is to do each piece, in order, without skipping ahead because you think you know what's coming. You will occasionally be wrong about what's coming. Read it anyway.
Reading it out loud helps
I still do this, forty-some years in. I read the row out loud, or at least move my lips, especially if there's anything unfamiliar in it. It slows you down to the speed your hands actually work at, which is slower than the speed your eyes read at. Your eyes want to skim. Don't let them.
The parenthetical stitch count is your friend, not your enemy
New folks tend to skip that number in parentheses because it looks like extra clutter. Don't skip it. That's the pattern's built-in error check, and it's the fastest way to catch a mistake while it's still one row deep instead of six rows deep.
Which brings me to a story.
I once crocheted through an entire stake conference — the whole thing, both sessions — working on a baby blanket. I had my project bag, I had my rhythm going, I was cruising along not paying much attention because the chapel lights are dim and I know this pattern in my sleep. Somewhere in there I reached into the bag in the dark and grabbed what I thought was my main color and it was not my main color. It was a skein from a completely different project, close enough in the dim light that I didn't notice. I worked the last twenty rows of that blanket in the wrong color before I got it home into real light and about had a heart attack.
Did I frog it? No. I did not. Twenty rows is a lot of rows, and the baby did not care, and honestly neither did I after about a day of being annoyed. It's a two-tone blanket now and I tell people it was on purpose. But here's the thing — if I'd been checking my stitch counts and glancing at my colors every row or two instead of running on autopilot, I'd have caught it after row one instead of row twenty. That's the actual lesson. Reading the pattern isn't just for beginners. It's for keeping yourself honest the whole way through, especially in a dim room where you can't see your yarn very well.
A few habits that'll save you grief
- Read the whole row before you start it, not just the first three words. Patterns sometimes have a little surprise in the middle — an increase, a color change — and you want to see it coming.
- Use a sticky note or your finger to mark which row you're on in a printed pattern. It's shockingly easy to lose your place and redo a row you already did, or skip one entirely.
- If a pattern uses an abbreviation you don't recognize, stop and look it up before you guess. Guessing wrong for six rows is a bigger job to undo than pausing for ten seconds now.
- Gauge doesn't matter here. I know some pattern intros make a big fuss about checking your gauge before you start anything. For a washcloth, I don't care, and you shouldn't either. If your stitches are a hair looser than mine, you'll get a slightly bigger washcloth. Congratulations. It still washes a dish.
Reading a pattern is not a mysterious skill some people have and some don't. It's just slow, careful translation, one instruction at a time, checking your count when the pattern tells you to. You'll get faster at it the same way you got faster at counting chains — by doing it a lot and being a little bored while you do.
Before next time, find any simple written pattern — even just a row or two — and read through it out loud without picking up your hook. Just practice translating it in your head first.