How to keep track of rows in crochet and knitting

Everyone loses count. The phone rings, a child asks a question, you watch ten minutes of television, and the pattern says “repeat rows 3 to 6 eleven more times”. The answer is not a better memory. It is a system where the number lives somewhere other than your head.

Six ways, compared

Method	Good for	Weak spot
Tally marks on the pattern	Any project at a table	Needs a pen in reach; messy over hundreds of rows
Ring or barrel counter on the needle	Knitting on straight needles	Easy to forget to turn; no use for crochet
Hand clicker	Fast, works by touch	Gets reset in a bag; no repeat count
Locking stitch marker every 10 rows	A record in the fabric that cannot be lost	Tells you tens, not units
Notes app	Always with you	Typing a number every row gets old
Row counter on a phone or tablet	Remembers the count, tracks repeats	The screen must stay awake

Most experienced makers combine two: a counter for the running number, and markers in the fabric as a check.

Patterns with repeats

A repeat needs two numbers. “Row 47” tells you how far you are. “Row 3 of the 4-row repeat” tells you what to do next. Trying to work the second out from the first, mid-row, is where mistakes come from.

The row counter keeps both. Tap the big plus button after each row and minus to undo. Set a repeat length, say 4, and the repeat counter shows which row of the repeat you are on while the main count carries on. The count is saved on the device each time it changes, so you can close the tab and pick up tomorrow.

Two things make it usable with your hands full:

• Keyboard control. Space, Enter, the right arrow and Page Down add a row; Backspace, the left arrow and Page Up take one away. Most Bluetooth page-turner pedals send Page Down or an arrow key, so a foot pedal works with no setup.
• The screen stays awake while the counter is open, in browsers that support it: Chrome, Edge, and Safari on iOS 16.4 or later. Elsewhere, lengthen your screen timeout while you stitch.

Charts are a different problem

On a colour chart, the number of the row is the easy part. The hard part is reading it: “4 blue, 2 white, 7 blue”, left to right on one row and right to left on the next, without skipping a square.

For that there is a pattern tracker alongside the counter. It shows the current row in words with a close-up of the chart, moves on one colour block per tap, tells you when the next colour change is coming, and remembers where you stopped. It opens charts made with the chart maker; see how to turn a photo into a crochet pattern.

Habits that prevent a lost count

1. Count at the same moment every time: as you turn the work, before the first stitch of the new row.
2. Never stop mid-row if you can help it. If you must, note the stitch as well.
3. Mark every tenth row with a locking marker. A miscount is then at most nine rows of doubt.
4. Write the count down before you put the work away, even if a counter has it.
5. Use a lifeline in lace or complicated knitting: a thread run through one row, so you can rip back to a known row.

Finding your place again

If the count is gone, the fabric still has it.

• Stocking stitch: count the V shapes up a single column. Leave out the cast-on row and include the loops on the needle.
• Garter stitch: each ridge is two rows.
• Single crochet: each row is one horizontal band of stitches; count along a side edge, where turning chains make rows easy to see.
• C2C: count the blocks along one edge. Each diagonal row adds one block until the corner.

Count from your last marker rather than from the start. For a repeat, find a row you can recognise, such as a cable crossing or a row of eyelets, and count on from there.