hi this is Rachel from TLC inspirations and I realized that I'm always telling you guys to count your stitches but I've never actually shown you in a separate video how to do that I do show you within you know different stitches and stuff but let's be clear I'm going to go ahead and start a chain and I'm going to do the chain row and I do not count this loop as a stitch it is not a stitch now I'm going to count as I go and I'm going to count at the end of the stitch this is chain this is a just chain that's one that's two three now you can see one two three they are when you count them you're not going to count where ever the hook is whatever loop the hook is in that does not count if I take my hook out you can see here's the first stitch here's the second stitch and here's the third so we have three stitches these are three chain stitches this loop does not count so let's keep going number four five six seven eight 910 okay so we've got ten chains now we're going to single and remember this first stitch is going to count as my turning chain so I'm skipping that and going in here this is my first stitch that's one stitch two stitches and doing single crochet okay now I've come to the end of my first row and I had ten chains at the bottom but one of them counted as my turning chain so I should have nine stitches on this first row again this is not going to count I'm going to pull that out and I'm going to show you one two three four five six seven eight nine stitches now I know that I have the correct amount of stitches and now I do my turning chain one chain flip and start another row so regardless of whether you have single crochet which is what this is double crochet half double crochet triple crochet the counting is always going to be the same and you're always going to have this kind of v-shape it's going to be a double loop like this if you have a hard time counting them like this right off the bat count as you go like I was in the beginning and that really helps and it also helps you to double check that you're in the spot that you're supposed to be in and that my friends is how you count your stitches thanks for watching you