crochet stumbling block

In my lunch break yesterday, I tried to move onto creating ripples and hit a bit of a stumbling block. I think I had been crocheting wrongly all along, but hadn't realised until it came to doing this. I discovered I hadn't been picking up the chains properly and when I tried really hard to pick them up properly... Well, I basically failed. The white example at the top looks pretty good, I'll admit, almost identical to the picture underneath it... but I actually turned it upside down for the photo. I was creating a mountain instead of a valley, increasing as I tried to decrease. Gah!The problem is that I accidentally kept crocheting into the same chain as you can (kind of) see from this picture. I tried again (in red) and had a little bit more success, but obviously still went quite wrong. I didn't have enough chains left at the end so must have missed some en route, and my wave is not nearly as regular as the one in picture. It is progress from the white one though and I don't feel too bad since the instructions kindly reassured me that crocheting directly into a foundation chain is very hard for a beginner.

So I'm not giving up yet, and for this lunch break I have brought some higher-quality wool to see if it makes it any easier for me to see what I'm doing. I'm hoping not to use high-quality wool to make the whole blanket, but I think it might help me to learn at least. Fingers crossed for a bit more success today!

By the way, the very lovely ripple blanket pattern I'm trying to use is written by Lucy and is available on her blog here.