Blanket is getting wider.

[ArielBeth]

I'm pretty new to crocheting and decided to do a blanket as my first project, but along the way I accidently (I don't how) added stiches along the way. Do I just start dropping stiches now to get back down to my starting count?

 

 

Edited October 7, 2020 by ArielBeth

[Granny Square]

This is a really common question from new crocheters.

The size of the hook usually doesn't factor into this, BUT it's not impossible that your tension is changing overall.  Sometimes on a heavy thing like a blanket, our tension can change a little as the weight of the project grows, or during the scary part of a monster movie, this is Halloween month....

Dropping/adding stitches to try to fix this is going to look awful - you can fudge 1 stitch maybe, but not a lot.

99.9 percent of the time the issue is adding or 'shorting' a stitch on 1 or both sides, sometimes shorting 1 side and adding on the other.

What stitch are you using? I'm going to use US stitch terms - A lot of new crocheters don't understand how to deal with turning chains, and this is what is causing their DC projects to skew.

Here is an excellent site in general for a new crocheter, it is US knit and crochet standards for pattern writing and other things, but if you are in the UK the standards are pretty much the same, just the name of the stitches change.  The chapter that I've linked to is 'how to read a crochet pattern', scroll down to 'working in double crochet' and read what it says about turning chains, because this is what trips up 99.9% of new crocheters who post 'my blanket it crooked' questions.  Notice at the left side of the page I linked there are other menu topics that might be helpful in general for a newbie, and an oldbie like me.

The gist of turning chains and DC:  the turning chain counts as a DC;  It sits slightly to the outside of the stitches, it is not literally IN a stitch, but ACTS like it is in the first stitch. 

Not reacting correctly to these 2 points is what causes blanket skew: 

(1) because the turning stitch ACTS like it is in the first stitch but isn't, you need to skip the first DC in the row below, because the turning chain is functionally 'in' it; if you don't skip the first stitch, you will have increased by 1 stitch.

(2) when you come to the end of a row after row 1, you need to stitch into the turning stitch - if you don't, you will decrease by 1 stitch.

One way to tell if you are adding or subtracting a stitch along the way is to pick a stitch just inside of 1 edge, and follow up the column of stitches that originated from that the stitch.  Let's say you picked the 5th stitch from the edge, if you follow that stitch up a few rows and that line disappears, you are losing stitches at that edge; if you follow it up and you are now  ore than 5 stitches from the edge, you are gaining stitches.

99.99% of patterns assume the construction above, ch3, skip first stitch, work into the top of the chain at the next row.

There are a bunch of work arounds, the easiest for a newbie might be to ch1 (does not count as a stitch), turn, SC into the first stitch, chain 1 or 2 depending on your stitch height tension--the topmost of the underlined chains made after the SC DOES count as a stitch and needs to be stitched into when you come upon it at the end of the next row.  It might be helpful to put a stitch marker in there (bobby pin works great) until you get into the habit of  doing this.

 

 

[Granny Square]

I made a little swatch, this is one way things can go wrong but I hope it is not confusing.

Possibly confusing because, each row is 10 stitches so not losing or gaining.  What I was mostly trying to show was how to track 1 stitch up an seeing if it either vanishes or gets farther from the edge.

The red stitch gets farther from the edge because on the side that stitch was close to, I correctly made the last stitch of the row into the top of the turning chain, but incorrectly did not skip the first DC of the row at the beginning after turning.  

The white stitch gets closer to the edge because at the end closest to the white stitch I did not stitch into the top of the turning chain from the prior row but correctly skipped the first stitch at the beginning.

In hindsight I should have made 3 swatches, because this does not show the effect on the end shape of the piece of always making the same 1 mistake, or always both mistakes, and my stitch count ended up the same because I alternated mistakes.  The way I did it, the sides were straight.  If you made both errors (at each end, each row) the piece would lose stitches and look like /   \ .  If you made only 1 of the errors you'd end up with I  /  or \  I

Edited October 7, 2020 by Granny Square