Crochet Afghan baby blanket gage question. Plz help!

[alycia_gardner]

I am making a baby blanket that is very simple my yarn is medium 4 and my hook is US K-10.5/6.50mm the length of my Afghan is 141ch using only double crochet stitches, I need to know how to gage my blanket so it is proportional and I have no measuring tools so I'm basing width off of the number of rows I should have. Can anyone help me who has made a blanket with a length of 141ch and how many rows were stitched for width? Lol I'm not even sure if any of this makes any sense.

[magiccrochetfan]

Hi Alycia, welcome to the ville!

 

Are you using a pattern at all?  

 

Do you have a ruler of any kind?  There are also other things you could use to check the size, like a piece of standard office paper, or a dollar bill if you are in the US (2.61 in wide x 6.14 in long according to a quick google).  no doubt we could find the dimensions of other standardized items too, like other countries' currency.  Just trying to help you think of ways to measure your project.  

[Granny Square]

The thing is, if you, Magiccrochetfan and I all made 141 chains and with your hook and yarn, we'd likely have different measurements--everybody's tension varies a bit. For what it's worth, 141 chains for me is about 41 inches.

 

Don't forget that for US double crochet, you chain some number and then make your first DC into the 4th chain from the hook; the 3 unused chains stand in for 1 DC, the real DC is the second DC (so over 4 chains there are 2 DC); therefore, your base chain is always 2 chains more than the total number of DCs that you need in that row. Long way to say, if you chain 141, you will have 139 DCs.

[magiccrochetfan]

Hi Granny Square!  

[Granny Square]

Hi Magic

 

I'm in, it's a little slow but that's OK. (to the OP, I was having computer trouble and chatted with Magiccrochetfan about it on another forum)

[alycia_gardner]

Thanks for the help but I figured out with 141 chain I need 70 rows to complete my blanket. I'm half way through my blanket now and it's getting longer on one side than the other so one raw edge is crooked any tips on how to fix this issue without having to re-start my project over? I thought about adding new stitches before I started working on the border after I finish all 70 rows but I'm afraid the longer and more crooked that edge gets my blanket won't look proportionate and I will need more than 70 more like 80 rows. Everytime I finish a row I crochet 3 ch and DC in the first stitch. Could that be the problem?

[magiccrochetfan]

You should count your stitches and see if the number of stitches per row is increasing.

[redrosesdz]

I agree with magic, that you need to count your stitches to make sure that each row has the same number.  If it doesn't, rip it out until they do.  Also, the turning chain (chain 3) for DC stitches counts as a stitch.  So, make sure that you include it in your count.

 

Here's a chart about turning chains and counting that helped me ...

 

SC stitches: chain 1 for the turning chain, turning chain doesn't count as a stitch, first stitch is in the first <, last stitch is in the last <

HDC stitches: chain 2 for the turning chain, turning chain sometimes counts as a stitch and sometimes doesn't, the pattern will tell you, follow the SC rules when it doesn't count and the DC rules when it does count.

DC stitches: chain 2 or 3 for the turning chain, turning chain counts as a stitch, first stitch is in the second <, last stitch is in the top of the previous row's turning chain

TR stitches: chain 3 or 4 for the turning chain, same rules as DC stitches