Help Reading Pattern

[RebeccaJ]

Hello! I just found this forum and hope that someone will be able to help me! 

I only started last week, and I've made a beanie which I am very proud of! But now I want to make a giraffe from a written pattern... And I am very confused! 

Is there a difference between 2dc and 2 dc? Both are double crochet (UK terms) but what does the space mean? Thank you!!

[NCcountrygal]

2dc=2 in one space/st. 2 dc = dc, dc

dcdc; dc, dc

can get very confusing when written like that. 

[ReniC]

Welcome to Crochetville.

I agree with Diana. Are the 2 stitches included in the stitch glossary on the pattern? It could be a typo too. If you have a link to your pattern we'd be able to determine for sure.

[bgs]

Patterns can be a bit of a puzzle.  Are you seeing both 2dc and 2 dc written in the same pattern? Punctuation and other instructions in round can also provide clues.   Patterns can have mistakes.  It is also easier/faster to type it out with no spaces.  Sometimes you have to look at the stitch count for the row if it was provided to figure out what to do.  Not enough information given to definitively say if there is a difference or not.

Posting this link on reading patterns.

https://www.craftyarncouncil.com/standards/how-to-read-crochet-pattern

Edited February 6, 2021 by bgs

[Granny Square]

^What they said.  RebeccaJ, don't feel bad, that pattern is poorly written, so it's not YOU it's the pattern writer.  

Conventionally written patterns would never have 2dc and 2 dc in the same pattern meaning 2 different things.  At best, if they DID, there would be a 'special stitches' (or stitch terms)  section which defined the difference.

Conventionally, if a pattern says something like "3 SC, 2 DC", or "3SC, 2DC" for example, and doesn't specifically say where to put them, both of those instructions would mean  "1 SC into each of the next 3 stitches, 1 DC into each of the next 2 stitches".  Usually there's a space between the number and the stitch name, but there is no  rule that says a space means 1 thing, and no space means another.

If a pattern has increases which are 2 stitches into 1, they would either define a term (usually "inc") in the stitch term section section, or say '2 DC in the next stitch" (that's where the 'telling you where to put them' comes in).

I strongly suggest, since you only started to crochet last week, that you stick to patterns from a source like Annie's Attic or Leisure Arts, or free patterns on yarn company sites (Yarnspirations.com or LionBrand.com for example, cover most US yarn brands and have lots of patterns for lots of different things), for your first few projects.  These sources are tech edited - there may still be errors, but are probably much fewer and far between, and they should be clearly and conventionally written.  We get so many questions here about self published patterns that are unintelligible.  

Annie's Attic has a couple of sites with free patterns, free-crochet.com and freepatterns.com. (there were several toys, and a giraffe HEAD of all things, but no giraffe).  Yarnspirations has a couple of crochet giraffes--link to the crochet giraffes.  All but the pillow were rated easy.