I've been working on making an afghan out of different crocheted squares. A couple of my latest squares turned out to be two different sizes. I used the same pattern to make them, and the same exact yarns. Since the squares are different sizes, it will be a challenge for me to join the squares together. This is not good.
The problem came about because I wasn't paying attention to what I was doing when I grabbed the crochet hooks I used to make each square. One square (the one shown on the right) was made with a Boye crochet hook, size H / 5.0 mm. At some point, my Boye hook was tucked in a bag somewhere and I grabbed a different hook, a Clover Soft Touch hook -- also a size H / 5.0 mm hook.
If you take a look at the photo collage posted above, you can see that these two hooks are very different. The only common element is the size. Everything else about these hooks is different. The heads are shaped differently; the handles are different shapes, and different thicknesses.
These differences might not seem like a huge deal, but they were enough to affect my gauge. For me, the Soft Touch hook resulted in a looser, more relaxed piece. The square I made with the Boye hook is denser.
The square I crocheted using the Boye hook is about half an inch smaller than the square I crocheted with the Clover Soft Touch crochet hook. Both my stitch gauge and my row gauge were affected. The smaller square is also quite a bit thicker than the larger square.
Lessons to Learn From This:- Once you've started a crochet project, be sure to keep using the same crochet hook you started with.
- If your crochet work is consistently too tight, or too loose, try crocheting with hooks made by a different manufacturer to see what effect they may have on your work. You can also try different hook sizes as well.
- Lessons I learned from my favorite crochet hook
- Get the free crochet pattern for this afghan square
- Find more free patterns for crocheting squares
- Visit our alphabetical index of free crochet patterns, or our list of free crochet patterns categorized by project type
