Practice Square, Start to Finish
Okay. This is the lesson where we stop doing pieces of things and just make a whole thing.
Everything up to now has been in parts. Chain a little, single crochet a little, turn, look at your edges. Today you're going to sit down and make one complete square, start to finish, and it's going to be yours, mistakes and all.
What you're making
A washcloth-sized square. Nothing fancy. Chain some number of stitches, single crochet back and forth until it's roughly square, fasten off. That's it. That's the whole project.
I want you using cotton yarn for this if you've got it, even though it's practice. Cotton holds its shape while you're learning so you can actually see your stitches, and it's what you'll use for a real washcloth later anyway, so you may as well get your hands used to it now. Acrylic is fine for a lot of things — I'll fight anybody who tells you acrylic is lesser yarn, I've got blankets from the seventies made of the cheapest Macey's acrylic you ever saw and they're still going — but for this, cotton's just easier to see.
Steps
1. Chain 21. Count it twice. (I said more or less last time about counting, but let's actually try to hit 21 today, since we're making something with corners.)
2. Single crochet into the second chain from the hook, and every chain after that. You should end with 20 single crochets. Count your stitches when you get to the end of the row. If you've got 18 or 22, something happened a few stitches back and that's fine, we're going to talk about that in a second.
3. Chain 1, turn. You know this part.
4. Single crochet across again, 20 stitches. Same as before. Into every stitch, not into the turning chain, not skipping the first one.
5. Keep going. Row after row, counting every single time, until your square is as tall as it is wide. Lay it flat next to your starting chain if you want to check — when the height matches the width, roughly, you're done.
6. Fasten off. Cut your yarn leaving about a six-inch tail, pull it through that last loop, and pull it snug. Weave the tail in with your hook or a yarn needle if you've got one. If you don't have a yarn needle yet, that's fine, just don't cut it flush — leave enough tail that it doesn't work its way loose.
About the mistakes you're going to make
You're going to lose count somewhere in there. Probably more than once. You'll get to the end of a row expecting 20 and get 19, or 22, and not have any idea when it happened.
Here's my actual opinion on this, not a nice one, an honest one: frog it. Pull it out back to where it's right and redo it. I know it feels like giving up. It isn't. Ripping back is a real skill, maybe the most useful one in this whole class, and the people who never learn to do it are the ones who quit six months in because they've got a scarf with a bump in it that bugs them every time they look at it.
I once frogged an entire afghan — weeks of work — because of one wrong stitch six inches down that I could not stop noticing. My husband thought I'd lost my mind over it. I did not care one bit. Some mistakes you can live next to. Some you can't. You'll learn which is which about your own work, but for a practice square, just rip it out. It costs you ten minutes, not your sanity.
And do not worry about gauge on this. Every crochet book on earth opens with a lecture about gauge and it terrifies beginners before they've even made a chain. For a washcloth-sized square it plain does not matter. If yours comes out bigger than mine, congratulations, you made a bigger washcloth. Nobody's grading the square footage.
A word on your hook and your hands
If your hand starts cramping partway through, stop and shake it out. Don't push through pain to finish the row. This isn't a race and nobody's timing you. I switched my grip after fifteen years of doing it the way my mother-in-law taught me because my wrist finally said no more, and I felt strangely disloyal about it, like I was betraying her, but my hand mattered more than my loyalty to a grip. Yours will tell you the same thing eventually. Listen to it.
If you're using a bargain aluminum hook and it feels a little slick or your hand's getting tired, that's normal too. I found a wooden yarn winder at an estate sale up past the point of the mountain for three dollars once, an actual antique, and I drove home so pleased with myself I called my son to brag about it. He did not understand why a three-dollar wooden gadget was thrilling. That's fine, some things you just have to be a little bit crazy about on your own. Nice tools are like that — you don't need them to start, but there's no shame in wanting them once you know what you're doing.
Before next time
Bring your square to class, finished or not, mistakes and all. We're going to look at everybody's together and I'll tell you honestly what's even and what isn't, which is more useful to you than me telling you it's all wonderful.