Crochet/Knit Tip: Don't Lose Your Place in the Pattern

Unless you are knitting and crocheting in a quiet isolated place with no distractions (no television, no people), you have probably completely lost your place in a pattern.   

Never Lose Your Place in a Knit or Crochet Pattern

As your knitting or crocheting, the telephone rings, someone interrupts you, you stop paying attention and put down the project, or the knit or crochet pattern is hard to keep track of because of multiple rows and repeats.

Have you ever spend hours knitting or crocheting and then had to frog it because you lost track of the row being worked. Frog?  What is frogging? To frog means to rip out stitches you have already knitted or crocheted.  Frogging gets its name from "rip it, rip it" which is the noise a frog makes.

Don't forget or lose your place again.  This quick hack will help.  Learn more about this quick tip by watching our video or keep reading this post.

There are various methods to keep track of the pattern row being worked on a knit or crochet project.  The way I prefer using requires a very cheap tool, a paper clip.  I call it the paper clip method.  Keeping track of the working row with this method is SO simple and easy.  

how to follow along in the written pattern

What is needed:

• Pattern
• Plastic Sheet Protector
• Paper Clip

what to do to track pattern rows:

PREPARE PATTERN

After deciding what you want to crochet or knit, copy or print the pattern.

PATTERN PROTECTION

After you have the pattern, place it in a plastic sheet protector.

BONUS STORAGE HACK:  I personally put all my printed and copied paper patterns in plastic sheet protectors and organize them in three-ring binders.  I have a separate binder for each crafting category - knit, crochet, sewing, quilting, machine embroider, etc.  The sheet protectors keep the paper patterns from wrinkling, ripping and tearing.

GRAB PAPER CLIP

To follow along in the written pattern, grab a paper clip and clip it to the side of the pattern pointing to the row being worked.

Slide the paper clip up or down the pattern as the rows are finished.

If the pattern has rows in the middle, all you have to do is fold it and again clip the paper clip pointing to the row being worked.

As mentioned earlier in this article, there are other ways to keep track of pattern rows.  They are:
* Hand-write the  row finished on a piece of paper
* Knitting Row Counter App
* Crochet Row Counter App
* Row Counter

Do you have any other tricks that help you keep track of pattern rows when knitting and crocheting a project?  Let us know by contacting us. 

Happy Knitting!  Happy Crocheting!

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