I'm a regular over in the cooking forum, but I have a question regarding my first crochet project. I'm hoping you can help me. I'm working on the Lion crochet along sampler afghan and I've got the first two sets of blocks done, but now I'm trying to get the cluster stitch blocks completed. I've watched videos of how to do cluster stitches online, read the primer from lion and still I'm having issues.

The loops at the top of the double crochets in each cluster seem to be really long and the stitches looked leaned over. Is this what it's supposed to look like? I'm having a hard time keeping tension on all the loops and not collapsing the chain ahead of each cluster (which makes doing the row of single crochets after each cluster row very difficult). When I was working on the blocks with simple rows of double crochets, I was able to keep tension on the loops and keep the rows relatively compact. I'm just not able to do that with the cluster stitches.

Maybe I'm over analyzing, but this just doesn't seem right. Any tips or tricks on how to make cluster stitches would be greatly appreciated.

I'm not sure of this forum's rules about posting links, but google comes up with the afghan if you want to look at it. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Thank you all!

Bri