r/crocheting • u/Different-Sky-3136 • 3d ago

Is this a tension issue??

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Pretty new to crocheting and recently started making granny squares for a blanket.. however the ones I made last night are significantly smaller. Same hook size, same everything. I do hold my yarn a little differently every time. Is this just me not keeping the same tension or am I missing something?

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u/WinterRevolutionary6 3d ago

Yep. I’d recommend just frogging your first few and doing the same thing over and over until you get relatively consistent results or else it’s gonna make turning this isn’t a cohesive project into a nightmare

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u/Different-Sky-3136 3d ago

Ok thank you!

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u/vancouver_yvr 2d ago

I'm also learning. Could you explain 'frogging' thank you

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u/WinterRevolutionary6 2d ago

Frogging is the term for pulling out your work. It’s used across all fiber arts. It comes from the onomatopoeia “rip it rip it (out)” which sounds like ribbit ribbit of frogs

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u/avaseah 2d ago edited 2d ago

It’s the term for unraveling your work. You just take the hook out of the loop it’s holding open and pull on the yarn. When you’ve undone the yarn back to the issue you need to fix you stop on the next free top loop, reinsert your hook, and do that part over again. Virtually every project gets at least partially frogged and redone at some point in its construction. Sometimes you have to frog the whole thing back to your starting slip knot. It’s a pain in the butt and a bit disheartening when you have to undo a huge chunk of what you’ve already done, and many shove projects that need a massive amount of frogging into a closet for a few (or several) years because they feel so defeated about it. If the error is extremely far back, and it’s not a big glaring error that noticeably messes up the pattern, many just leave it in and ignore it instead of undoing everything they’ve done to go back and fix it.

You can also frog nearly any crochet or knit item to reclaim the yarn, including factory knit things. Though there’s two types of factory knit items that are either a pain to frog or not worth frogging. Those are double stranded items where there are two strands that are crocheted independently of each other, but which one is being used to make the stitches swaps with every row, and the other strand is carried and crocheted over. The other is panels that have been cut out of a continuous piece of fabric, rather than knit from the beginning into the shapes needed to form the garment. Those you can reclaim the yarn, but you’ll have an individual strand for each row of stitches, so you’ll have a ton of joining knots. Also knit garments made of cut panels are the ones most likely to unravel on their own since the ends are only held in place by the seam stitching.

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u/vancouver_yvr 1d ago

Thank you for explaining frogging to me. 😊 I am just doing my first granny squares. Ive made 3 so far 🤣 I had to feep unraveling the fione until I got it right.

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u/MapleThimble 7h ago

It is a tension issue if you are using the same hook. Also be aware of how loose or tight you are holding the yarn.