Yes, you CAN fix those mistakes!

    You heard me right. The mistakes made in the first few rows of a crochet project are fixable! And I don’t mean by unwinding the bulk of your project and basically starting from scratch. 

    One of my proudest accomplishments since I got back into knitting and crocheting this year has been crocheting a blanket beginning to end. It took weeks and at least 10 large skeins of yarn but the final result was so worth it. However, along the way I made several mistakes. 

    And in making those mistakes and then coming back to fix them, I improved my skills much more than I would have if I had somehow made a perfect blanket on my first attempt.

    And I also discovered something I don’t see many fiber artists talking about online. Correcting mistakes! A lot of people will tell you how to avoid them, and show you their failed first attempts and then post the pictures and reels of their final and “perfect” version, without much explanation of how they got from point A to point B.

    But what do you do when you’ve invested too much time and energy to start over completely? Well it turns out, you can fix mistakes without starting over. 

The first two rows of this granny stripe blanket were made with a hook I eventually decided was too small and so at the third row I switched to a hook one size larger and maintained that for the entire rest of the blanket. By the time I got to nearly the end, I realized that the edges were not straight because of mainly the discrepancy in the hook sizes and tension from those first few rows. This wouldn’t be too big of a deal for most people but I thought there had to be a way to fix it, and it would be a shame not to at least try.

I discovered this hidden gem on YouTube by Tamara Kelly, demonstrating exactly how to fix the problem I was facing. While her demonstration uses a basic double crochet stitch, I applied the same basic idea to my granny stripes, and discovered that while it wasn’t perfect, it was certainly better! And to the untrained eye, it didn't stand out or look out of place.

     This may not work for every person and every project, but it's definitely a beginner-friendly technique that's worth trying rather than losing weeks of progress by starting over or giving up.