Learning how to crochet.

My mom must love it that I am learning to crochet.... I have called her more than 6 times in the past three days to ask her questions about it. =) Earlier this week I got to meet my friend at JoAnn fabrics to search for the right yarn. We ended up with all the right stuff, plus a little more for a future project of necklace making! So I got a book on how to crochet a blanket and all. I read it from cover to cover. I looked online for clarification for some terms.... who knew that "drawing up a loop" meant that I had to pull the loop through the other look already on the hook. Not me. Thanks Internet!

To start I took my "practice" yarn and played around with stitches. This isn't a very good picture but I am using light colored yarn and it doesn't like the flash.

I then took a skein of my "baby neutral" yarn and book with me to work yesterday and got started. Once I got into the rhythm of things, (and called my mom three more times) I calculated my gauge and chained 158. Ugh!!!! Try counting that high when everything looks the same. I got distracted some times and had to stop and re-count. From there I started on the double crochet. Doing that into a tiny single-with chain was ridiculously hard. It took me over an hour to finish it. I didn't have anything to hold onto and I was trying to count stitches to make sure I got it right... well I finished with 155 instead of 156. So I called mom again. =) We got the problem all worked out and I now have 5 rows worked.

The only problem now is that the length is supposed to be 34 inches. The single chain was a few cm over that. With the first row it grew to about an inch longer. Now I have over 3 feet of length. I did think that maybe I am pulling my stitches too tight and that is effecting the stretch of the yarn, but I have no idea.

I am hoping that if I loosen my stitches, maybe that will shorten the length of the rows.

And now.... I go back to crochetting!