Turning at the End of a Row
Okay. You've made it to the end of your first row of single crochet. Congratulations, that's a real accomplishment, and now we have to talk about what to do when you get there, because this is the part where a lot of beginners just kind of stall out.
Here's the thing nobody tells you up front: you don't just turn your work and start crocheting into the top of last row's stitches. If you do that, your rows get shorter and shorter and shorter until you're crocheting a triangle instead of a washcloth. You need a little bit of height to climb back up to, and that's what the turning chain is for.
The turning chain
When you get to the last stitch in your row, chain one. That's it. That one chain is your turning chain, and it stands in for the height of the first single crochet stitch in the next row.
Then turn your work.
I turn mine clockwise, hook still in my hand, work still on the hook, like I'm turning a steering wheel. Some people flip it the other way. It genuinely does not matter which direction, as long as you do it the same way every time so you don't confuse yourself about which side is facing you.
Finding your first stitch in the new row
This is where people get lost. You just made a turning chain. It is sitting right there, tempting you, looking exactly like a stitch. It is not a stitch. Do not crochet into it.
Your first single crochet of the new row goes into the top of the last stitch you made in the previous row — the one right under that turning chain, not the chain itself. Look at the row below. Count your stitches across if you need to. If you crochet into the turning chain by mistake, you'll end up adding a stitch you didn't mean to have, and two rows later you'll be squinting at your washcloth wondering why it's turned into a trapezoid.
Which, incidentally, is exactly how my first project went. My very first thing I ever made was a scarf, and I kept adding stitches without knowing I was doing it, row after row, and it came out shaped like a trapezoid. Wide at one end, narrow at the other. I wore the dang thing all winter anyway and told people it was "modern." It was not modern. It was a mistake I hadn't learned to spot yet.
The whole sequence, step by step
- Work your last single crochet in the row.
- Chain 1.
- Turn your work.
- Skip the turning chain. Don't crochet into it.
- Insert your hook into the top of the first real stitch from the row below and single crochet as usual.
- Keep going across the row.
That's the whole pattern for the rest of your washcloth. Row, chain one, turn, skip the chain, work across. Over and over.
Counting to catch mistakes early
I'll say the same thing I said last lesson: count your stitches at the end of every row. If you started with 20 stitches, you should have 20 at the end of every row after that, forever, until you decide to change the count on purpose. If you've got 21, you probably crocheted into that turning chain. If you've got 19, you probably skipped a stitch somewhere, which happens too, usually at the very end or very beginning of a row where things are easy to miss.
Catching it after one row is a two-minute fix. Catching it eight rows later is a project. This is why I'd rather you frog three rows now than carry a mistake all the way to the end and stare at it every time you use the washcloth. Ripping out isn't failure. It's just part of the skill. The people who never learn to pull their work back are the ones who quit, because they get three-quarters through something they hate and don't know how to fix it.
A word on your grip while you're doing all this
Turning the work is also a good moment to notice how you're holding the hook, because you'll naturally readjust your grip a little every time you turn. My mother-in-law taught me to hold it like a pencil, and I used it that way for about fifteen years before my wrist started complaining and I switched to the knife grip, holding it more like you'd hold a knife to cut a steak. It felt disloyal to change after fifteen years of doing it her way, but I did it anyway, and my wrist has been happier since. Use whichever one feels right in your hand. There's no prize for suffering through the wrong grip out of habit.
Before next time: practice five or six rows of single crochet on your practice swatch, turning chain and all, and count your stitches at the end of every single row before you start the next one.