By For the past few months I’ve been diligently crocheting a baby blanket. This was my first attempt at a larger crochet project, having ‘mastered’ baby booties, pacifier clips and scarves. I don’t know anyone pregnant or contemplating a baby, so there was zero deadline. The stitch, lemon peel, is simple – made up of alternating single crochets and double crochets. I was convinced I couldn’t mess up.
I was wrong.
Last week I measured my work in progress to see how close I was to completion and discovered that my blanket was growing, in a bad way. The initial rows measured 31 inches wide. The most current row measured closer to 34 inches. I was aiming for a square, but was headed toward a pyramidesque blob.From googling what I think happened is that I loosened my tension, so my stitches where fluffier. Secretly I think I also must have added a stitch or two somewhere accidently
(not my blanket, but a visual so you can get an idea of what was happening)
Even though I was more than halfway through, I frogged the whole darn thing. Frog it is when you rip out (get it ribbit) all the stitches in a project. While disheartening, there really wasn’t another option.
I was in a tailspin for a bit, bashing my crocheting skills. Woe as me!!! I have since somewhat recovered. I’ve decided I need a few quick wins to boost my confidence, so I’ll be attempting either a scarf and/or stuffed animals as my next projects.
Below is the only documentation of the baby blanket (really a picture of Mavis that happened to show a tiny bit of it. After my frog it, I carefully returned the yarn to pristine status so that I can use the yarn again, should I so desire. Adding insult to injury, my yarn did get tangled up as I rewound it, so I had to cut a portion out and toss it.
I did learn several lessons from this:
- Watch my tension
- Measure/count stitches earlier in the project
- From my google searches, start with a bigger hook for the initial set up row
- Don’t be afraid to start over
- Don’t cry over spilt milk
