[Nfb-krafters-korner] Help With Crochet!!!

[eileen SCRIVANI]

Hi Crocheters:

I have a few questions about a shawl I'm attempting to crochet and am not sure how bad what I started doing will be in crochet technicality ...

I was at a prayer shawl meeting on Tuesday and one of the other group members started telling me how to do a "simple," but fancier crochet stitch.  Well, I'm very slow going at crochet at this point, so only did a chain of 56 during the meeting and started working on it at home.  here is what I thought the pattern was going to be:

1.  Chain 56.
2.  Double crochet in fourth chain from hook, then DC 7 more ( a total of 8 DC's so far).
3.  * Skip 2 chains, and double crochet 3 in next chain; repeat from * to last 9 chains and double crochet these last 9 stitches.


Well, here's the thing, either my friend remembered the directions wrong, or more likely, I some how came up with this on my own! <SMILE>  Okay, now I have the real written directions and they are much more complicated, at least for me, than what I have been doing.  I'm not sure I like the feel of what I've produced, but it's easy enough for me to work at this point. Do you think what I have been doing will turn out to be a sloppy/unattractive look?  
In the "real" directions I see that after some of the skips they are chaining, but I hate chaining because those are the things I have trouble going into and counting.  This is supposed to be an offset shell stitch and in total I wind up with 53 double crochets in 1 row.  This one row just keeps repeating on every row until the desired length.  

Thanks for any input & suggestions.

Eileen