Customer has a question about increasing stitches—please provide tips, thanks

Hello everyone, I received a question from a CP customer via private message and hope you can help:
__________________________________________________________________________________
I’m a complete beginner at crocheting. I recently ordered a crochet pattern for a hat from Crazy Patterns. The instructions say to start each round with a chain stitch and end it with a slip stitch. But when I’m crocheting, I’m ending up with extra stitches. What am I doing wrong? Can I crochet the hat without the starting and slip stitches?
__________________________________________________________________________________
Thanks :-)

Perhaps the chain stitch replaces the first stitch. In that case, you’d crochet the chain stitch, then work the next stitch into the second stitch of the previous round, and finish with a slip stitch. 

Hi. Theoretically, you can crochet in spiral rounds without chain stitches or slip stitches. Are you supposed to be working single crochet? Or half double crochet or double crochet? With double crochet and half double crochet, you can very quickly end up with unintended increases.

With single crochet, I could imagine that you might accidentally work into the slip stitch. You could solve this by counting the stitches round by round. 

Like Nicole, I also think that the slip stitch is being worked into here. If you’re getting unwanted increases, that’s actually the only reason I can think of.

When rounds are closed with a slip stitch, in most cases the slip stitch isn’t counted as a stitch and isn’t worked into. That means it’s simply skipped in the next round.

Just mark the slip stitch with a piece of yarn. Then, in the next round, skip the stitch with the yarn. Alternatively, mark the beginning of each round and simply remember to skip the stitch before the marked stitch. :-)