Spotting a Mistake Before It's Six Inches Down
Okay. Your washcloth's finished, ends woven in, and it probably looks pretty good. So now let's talk about the thing that happens on your next one, and the one after that, because it will happen: you're going to make a mistake and not notice for a while.
I want to catch this early in your crocheting life, because it's the difference between people who keep going and people who quit in month two, convinced they're bad at this. You're not bad at this. You just haven't learned to look at your own work yet.
My trapezoid scarf
My very first project was a scarf. It was supposed to be a rectangle, the same width the whole way down, nice and simple. It came out shaped like a trapezoid — narrow at one end, wide at the other, like a piece of pie that got confused about what it wanted to be.
What happened was I kept adding stitches without knowing it. Every row got a little wider and I didn't catch it because I wasn't counting, I was just going. By the time I noticed, I was most of the way done and had no earthly idea which row it started on.
I wore that thing all winter anyway. Told people it was "modern." Nobody believed me, but nobody argued either.
I tell you that one because the mistake wasn't the problem. Not noticing was the problem. If I'd caught it row two, I fix one row. Instead I wore a trapezoid.
What actually goes wrong, most of the time
For a beginner, it's almost always one of two things:
You gained stitches. You worked into the same stitch twice somewhere, or you worked into a turning chain you weren't supposed to count, and now your row is wider than the last one.
You lost stitches. You skipped a stitch at the end of a row, usually the very last one before you turn, because it's easy to miss it in the corner.
Both of these show up the same way: your edges stop being straight. That's your alarm bell.
How to check without it taking forever
Here's what I actually do, every few rows, and it takes about ten seconds:
- Look at the edges, not the middle. Lay the piece flat. The two side edges should run straight up and down. If one edge is drifting outward or caving in, something happened on that side.
- Count the row you just finished. Not every single row forever — just often enough to catch drift. Every four or five rows is plenty for a washcloth.
- Compare it to the row below. Same stitch count? Good. Off by one or two? You've got your culprit, and it's close by, not six inches back.
The turning chain corner is where most people lose a stitch. You get to the end of a row, you're tired of counting, and you skip working into that last stitch because it's tucked up against the chain and easy to miss. Check that corner specifically. It's a repeat offender.
When you find one
If it's one row back, sometimes you can just fudge it — work an extra decrease or increase into the current row to even things out. That's fine for a washcloth. Nobody's grading you.
If it's several rows back and it actually bothers you, take it out. I know that sounds like a lot of work for a washcloth, but here's my honest opinion: frogging isn't failure, it's the whole skill. Pulling your work back out is a real, normal, permanent part of crochet, not a punishment for messing up. The people who never learn to rip back are the ones who eventually quit, because they get stuck babying a mistake they can't stand looking at.
(I frogged an entire afghan once — weeks of work — because of one bad row six inches down that bugged me every single time I looked at it. Ronald thought I'd lost my mind. I did not care.)
A word about eyestrain, not drama
If you're checking your edges in dim light, you will miss things. This isn't a safety lecture, it's just true — a lot of "I didn't notice" is really "I couldn't see it." Do your row-checking somewhere with decent light, and if your eyes are tired, that's a fine stopping point for the night. The mistake will still be there tomorrow, waiting patiently, unbothered.
Before next time
Pull out anything you've already made, even that first washcloth, and lay it flat. Look at the edges. See if you can find where it drifted, if it did. You're not fixing anything tonight — just practicing the looking.