knitting Archives - Page 15 of 28

Working a m2 aka double m1 increase

There are various ways of working a double increase. Take for example a double yarn over. In this tutorial I will focus on the make 2 increase or m2 for short. It can also be referred to as a “double make 1” (m1) increase. It basically consists of working 2 m1 increases directly after one other in the same strand of yarn between 2 stitches in the row directly below the one you’re currently working.

The m1 increase is a directional one. This means that there is a left leaning version (m1l) and a right leaning version (m1r). The m2 version that consists of first working a m1r, followed by a m1l, makes a very decorative horizontal strand in the fabric. This is the version I’ll show you below. Different looks can be achieved by first working a m1l, followed by a m1r, working m1r twice, or a m1l twice. Experiment and choose the one that gives the look you like for a particular project!

Please do note, that since this increase uses the strand of yarn already there between stitches, it tends to tighten up the knitting. For this reason I advise to work one or more plain rows between increase rows, especially when stacking them.

Materials used

Yarn: * Paintbox Yarns Simply DK, a good value, good quality 100% acrylic yarn, here in the color 128 Lime Green.

Needles: * KnitPro Zing Fixed Circular Needles. In this tutorial, I used the 4 mm (US 6) size with a cable length of 80 cm (32 inches).

Working a m2 increase step by step

First take your knitting. Here I’ve continued with the little swatch I used with a previous tutorial.
Knit to the spot where you want to make the increase.
First, work your way across the row until you’ve reached the point where you want to make the increase. In this case, I will be making the M2 increase 5 stitches in from the left edge. I’d make the increase in the middle of my swatch for a truly centered result, but alas, my swatch has an odd number of stitches.
First we start the m1r increase
To do so, lift the thread between the stitch just knit and the next one from the back with your left needle.
Insert the right-hand knitting needle into the front of the loop.
Wrap the yarn around the needle…
… and pull in through, slide the stitch of the left-hand needle to complete the m1r part of this double increase.
Next, we’re going to tackle the m1l part of the increase.
To do so, lift the thread between the stitch just knit and the next one from the front with your left-hand needle.
Insert the right-hand knitting needle into the back of the loop.
Wrap the yarn around the needle…
… and pull in through, slide the stitch of the left-hand needle to complete the m1l part of this double increase.
This is how it looks after this increase has been worked in 3 RS rows.
Pretty, isn’t it? And that’s all there is to it!

Thanks to my Patreon supporters for bringing you this freebie! Creating quality patterns and tutorials is a lot of work and resource-intensive. However, I find it important to give you free content like this tutorial. Thanks to the generous support of my Patreon supporters, I can make it happen. Thank you, patrons! Click here to join, or click here to read more about La Visch Designs on Patreon.

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tutorial – pick up and knit

Turquoise swatch on a blue knitting needle against a white background with the text "pick up and knit".

In an earlier tutorial I already showed you how to pick up stitches. But what is the difference between “pick up and knit” and “picking up stitches”? The main difference is that with “pick up and knit” new yarn is introduced to form new stitches. “Picking up stitches” is merely placing loops from an edge of the existing piece of knitting on a knitting needle.

Pick up and knit, like just picking up stitches, is a way to add knitting to an existing piece of fabric, independent of the original knitting direction. It can be used to create finished edges around necklines, button bands, etc.

Materials used

Yarn: * Paintbox Yarns Simply DK, a good value, good quality 100% acrylic yarn, here in the color Marine.

Needles: * KnitPro Zing Fixed Circular Needles. In this tutorial, I used the 4 mm (US 6) size with a cable length of 80 cm (32 inches).

Planning your pick up rate

A stitch is usually wider than it’s tall: it has a different row gauge than stitch gauge. This has as a result that picking up stitches along vertical edges at a rate of 1:1 usually doesn’t give an optimal result. In other words: we have to plan in advance how often to pick up and knit the stitches to avoid puckering and ruffling in the newly added piece of knitting. For this it’s useful to divide the edge into sections, using stitch markers. The possible sections would be vertical edge, diagonal edge and horizontal edge. The latter would be picking up along a bind-off or cast-on edge, where every stitch in the edge equals a stitch to be picked up and knit.

For the vertical and diagonal edges, if no ratio is specified in your pattern, a rule of thumb is to pick up approx. two stitches for every three rows or three stitches for every four rows. It’s also possible to calculate the pick-up rate exactly. To do so, measure the gauge of your blocked piece or swatch and pick up the correct number of stitches per 10 cm/inches along the edge to match your stitch gauge.

Pick up and knit step by step

In this tutorial I’m going to show you how to pick up stitches from the bind-off edge of a piece of simple stockinette. For this I made a little swatch. Of course, you can also pick up stitches along a cast on or side edge. Some people prefer using a crochet hook to pick up and knit, but in this example I’m just using knitting needles. Time to get started!

Find the most right stitch on the edge
With picking up stitches we work from right to left, with the right side of the fabric facing. We start by finding the outer right stitch on the edge and insert the knitting needle underneath it. In this example I’m working on a bind-off edge and I’m inserting my needle underneath both legs of the v. You can, of course, pick up only one of the strands, but that will result in a looser, less tidy connection. When working on a vertical edge, insert your needle under both strands of the edge stitch.
Wrapping the working yarn around the needle
Next is to wrap your working yarn around the knitting needle (or crochet hook). Leave enough of a tail to weave it in later on. About 15 cm or 6 inches should be enough.
Pulling the yarn through
Now pull the yarn wrapped around the needle through the fabric to form a stitch.
Repeat steps 1-3
Now just repeat steps 1-3 starting at the next spot where you want to pick up and knit a stitch until the whole edge has been worked. The result will look something like this:

What about garter stitch?

Yes, you can also pick up and knit from a fabric in garter stitch, or any kind of stitch, actually. The nice thing of garter stitch is that it has those typical garter bumps or ridges. This makes it very easy to pick up and knit a stitch every other row, when working on a side/vertical edge. Just insert your needle underneath a loop of the ridge! In the picture below that’s exactly what I did.

Pick up and knit from a garter stitch edge

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tutorial – picking up stitches

Picking up stitches, not to be confused with “pick up and knit”, is a knitting technique that most knitters will encounter sooner or later. It’s a way to continue working on an otherwise finished edge of a knitting project. It can be used to add a finishing around necklines, to add button bands or to make a project seamless for example.

The main difference with “pick up and knit” is that with plain “picking up stitches” no new yarn is added and no new stitches are formed. In other words: loops from an edge of the existing piece of knitting are placed on a knitting needle. That’s it.

Materials used

Yarn: * Paintbox Yarns Simply DK, a good value, good quality 100% acrylic yarn, here in the color Marine.

Needles: * KnitPro Zing Fixed Circular Needles. In this tutorial, I used the 4 mm (US 6) size with a cable length of 80 cm (32 inches).

Where and what to pick up?

In this tutorial I’m going to show you how to pick up stitches from the side of a piece of simple stockinette. For this I made a little swatch. Of course, you can also pick up stitches along a cast on or bind off edge.

Turquoise knitted swatch in stockinette stitch on a white background.

If you take a look at the picture below, you can see that I’m holding the swatch in such a way that one of the vertical edges is facing. Do you see that the outer column of stitches forms a (somewhat wobbly) line of v’s?

Turquoise knitted swatch held such that the edge is visible.

In the following picture you can see it a bit more clearly. I’ve inserted the knitting needle underneath both legs of the v at the edge of the fabric.

Picking up stitches; where to insert the knitting needle? Turquoise knitted swatch with a blue knitting needle inserted underneath both legs of a v-shaped stitch at the edge of the fabric.

However, when merely picking up stitches, it is very hard to pick up both legs of every v/stitch along the edge. Therefor usually only one of the legs is picked up. For example the left one:

Picking up stitches: Turquoise knitted swatch with a blue knitting needle inserted underneath the left leg of a v-shaped stitch at the edge of the fabric.

Or the right one:

Picking up stitches: Turquoise knitted swatch with a blue knitting needle inserted underneath the right leg of a v-shaped stitch at the edge of the fabric.

Picking up stitches step by step

Find the most right stitch on the edge
With picking up stitches we work from right to left. We start by finding the outer right stitch on the edge and insert the knitting needle underneath one of the legs of the v. here I’ve chosen to insert underneath the left leg, which is the one closest to me.
Continue picking up stitches
Next I move one stitch to the left and pick that one up. Again by inserting the knitting needle underneath the leg of the v closest to me.
The result
When all stitches along the edge are picked up, this is the result:

Pick up rate

In this example I picked up 1 stitch for every row of the stockinette. However, a stitch is usually wider than it’s tall: it has a different row gauge than stitch gauge. This has as a result that picking up stitches along vertical edges at a rate of 1:1 usually doesn’t give an optimal result.

If no ratio is specified in your pattern, a rule of thumb is to pick up approx. two stitches for every three rows or three stitches for every four rows. It’s also possible to calculate the pick-up rate exactly. To do so, measure the gauge of your blocked piece or swatch and pick up the correct number of stitches per 10 cm/inches to match your stitch gauge. This would also work for any diagonal edges you may encounter. Take for example when picking up stitches for finishing off neck edges.

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tutorial – reading knitting charts

Many knitting patterns contain shaping or patterning. The latter may be lace, cables, knit/purl patterning, color work or a combination of these. These instructions may be written out completely. But, especially with more complex patterning, this can become a veritable wall of text pretty soon.

Enter charts! A knitting chart is a compact visual representation of the knitting project shown from the right (or front) side. Each box on a chart represents a stitch, and every chart includes a legend explaining what to do for each symbol included. My patterns always contain both charted and written out instructions, because there just are differences in how people parse information best. That said, charts can be intimidating if you don’t quite know how to read them.

So, in this tutorial I’ll tell you all about it, for both knitting flat and knitting in the round.

Where to start reading knitting charts?

Yes, there are differences in reading charts for knitting flat back and forth and for knitting in the round. There are, however, more commonalities than differences. I’ll show you, using the chart for my (free!) Autumn Leaves Shawl pattern.

As you can see, there are numbers at the top and at the bottom. These represent the stitches that are to be worked horizontally. Also, there are numbers at the sides of the chart, these indicate the rows or rounds to be worked. Since this is a chart for flat knitting, the numbers are alternated on the right and left side of the chart.

The rule of thumb is always to begin reading your chart at the box marked “1” for both stitch and row indication. In this chart that’s in the lower right corner. Then, proceed going left to the stitch marked “2” in the same row etc until you’ve finished the row.

Since this is a chart for flat knitting, after we’ve finished the row we have to turn the work. Next is row number 2, this one is to be worked from the left to the right. If you have your knitting in front of you, it really makes sense. You’re working the back (the wrong side) of the work, but looking at the chart from the front, so the chart is to be worked backwards when compared with the previous row.

If you’re working in the round, all vertical numbers will only be on one side of the chart. See for an example the chart above. And since every round is worked with the right side showing (towards you), you just move up vertically and work the second round from the bottom from right to left as you did for the first round.

Decoding the symbols

As I told you above, every chart includes a legend. The legend is very important, because it defines the stitches or colors that correspond with the stitches on the chart. Quite good to know when trying reading knitting charts! Also, do make sure to closely examine the legend before you begin knitting. There may be different meanings to certain symbols in the particular chart, than you’re used to.

In the leafy border chart posted above, there are 2 stitches for which the symbols have a different meaning on the wrong side and right side of the fabric. In this example, a blank box is knitted on the right side (odd rows) and purled on the wrong side (even rows). Boxes containing a black dot are purled on the right side (odd rows) and knitted on the wrong side (even rows).

The other stitches used, also have their wrong side equivalents. They are, however, not mentioned in the chart because they are not used on wrong side rows. This makes the chart “cleaner”.

Another symbol you may encounter is the gray “no stitch” box. These may be used in a chart to make the charted representation more clear. When you encounter one, just ignore and skip it in the chart. It does not represent a stitch to be worked on your needle. As a matter of fact, the leafy border chart also had some of these stitches on the left side of the chart. I just hid them to make the chart look more clean and save toner/ink for folks wanting to print it.

Repeats

Many patterns feature a repeat. This is a section of patterning that is to be repeated both horizontally and vertically. Repeats are typically indicated by a box or frame in a contrasting color. In the example below a red frame is used.

Example chart for knitting flat back and forth.

In this chart, stitches 1-8 are to be repeated until 1 stitch before the end of the row. After that stitch number 9 is worked. When working repeats, it may be useful to place a marker between the repeats. This helps you keep your place and makes it easier to identify and correct mistakes. Once all 4 rows in the repeat are worked, they can be repeated too if the pattern asks for it.

Reading your knitting = reading your chart

Remember that I said that a knitting chart is a compact visual representation of the knitting project shown from the right side? Let’s put both the chart and the resulting piece of knitting next to each other:

Unfortunately, I don’t have a picture of the knitted leaf detail in the same orientation as the chart. So, trust me when I say that the leaf pictured above, was started at it’s upper right corner. The stitches that were bound off in row 18, can be seen in the lower left corner of the shawl edge.

Do you see that the elements in the chart are very recognizable in the resulting knitting? Take for example the rows with “yo, k1, yo”, in the knitted leaf they form the very recognizable “midrib” and “veins” of the leaf. Similarly, the centered double decrease in row 17 forms the apex of the leaf.

In other words: once you get more comfortable in reading your knitting, this will also enable you to see at a glance where you are in the pattern (chart) and whether any mistakes are made. If there are any errors, this will usually be noticed because things don’t “look” right, don’t line up correctly or because there are not enough stitches to work the chart.

And that’s how to go about reading knitting charts!

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tutorial – working a double yo

A yarn over (abbreviated as “yo”) is a simple way to increase stitches and deliberately make a little hole in your knitting. I wrote all about it in this tutorial. A double yarn over is exactly what it seems to be: a yarn over that creates two new stitches instead of a single one as with a regular yarn over. And yes, the hole that it creates when using this stitch in lace is bigger as well. In patterns, it’s sometimes referred to as “yarn over twice”.

This tutorial will give you step-by-step instructions on how to work the “double yarn over” increase.

Materials used

Yarn: * Paintbox Yarns Simply DK, a good value, good quality 100% acrylic yarn, here in the color 155 Vintage Pink.

Needles: * KnitPro Zing Fixed Circular Needles. In this tutorial, I used the 4 mm (US 6) size with a cable length of 80 cm (32 inches).

Working a double yo step by step

For this tutorial I made a little swatch in stockinette, with garter stitch borders to prevent it from curling.

1. First, work your way across the row until you’ve reached the point where you want to make the increase. In this case, I will be making the double yo increase 2 sts in from each of the garter stitch borders. But, I don’t want to increase the total number of stitches on my needles. This means that for every double yo worked, there should also be 2 stitches decreased. In this example I’ll be working a k2tog before the double yo and an skp after it.

2. In the below picture I’ve worked the k2tog decrease.

3. To make the double yo, wrap the yarn around the right-hand needle twice. To do so, do the following twice: move the working yarn from the back to the front between the needles and then over the right-hand needle back to the back of the work.

Wrapping the yarn around the needle twice

4. In the following picture I worked the skp decrease directly after the double yo.

5. This is how it looks after working the entire row, with one more repeat of steps 2-4:

The wrong side steps of working a double yo

6. Now we’re going to work the wrong side of the fabric. This is where the magic for making a double yarn over really happens. First, work to the point where you encounter the double yo loop.

7. The trick with working the double yo on the wrong side row, is to work both a knit and a purl stitch into the double yarn over loop. Both are needed to allow the second stitch to remain a separate one. The order, however, doesn’t matter. I prefer to start with a purl stitch when working stockinette, because that takes out the counting: just purl along until you encounter a double yarn over loop, then work a knit stitch as your second stitch into the loop. In the picture below, I just worked the purl stitch and moved that part of the loop off my left-hand needle.

8. Next, I worked a knit stitch into the second part of the double yarn over loop:

9. This is how it looks after the complete WS row has been worked:

10. In the below picture a few more rows in stockinette have been worked. Do you see there are 2 columns of knit stitches above each double yo?

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tutorial – knit the knits and purl the purls

Sometimes in patterns you may encounter the phrase “knit the knits, and purl the purls”. Besides the abbreviated versions of this, you may also encounter “work the stitches as they appear”. Especially if you’re a new knitter, it may be confusing what is exactly meant with this. No stress though! In this tutorial I’ll tell you all about it.

What it all comes down to, is being able to “read” your knitting. If you can correctly determine whether a certain stitch on your needle is a knit or a purl stitch, the instruction tells you exactly what to do next:

When you identify a knit stitch, it is to be knitted.
If you identify a purl stitch it is to be purled.

The important thing here is to remember is this: You only have to look at what the stitches look like on the left-hand needle while you’re working the new row or round. This can be confusing. What looks as a knit stitch on one side of the fabric, looks like a purl stitch on the other side. Ignore the side of the fabric facing away from you and focus only on the side facing you.

Below I’ll show you how to go about identifying your stitches, with the help of a swatch in 2×2 rib. (Ribbing formed by repeating (k2, p2) across your piece.)

Materials used

Yarn: * Paintbox Yarns Simply DK, a good value, good quality 100% acrylic yarn, here in the color 155 Vintage Pink.

Needles: * KnitPro Zing Fixed Circular Needles. In this tutorial, I used the 4 mm (US 6) size with a cable length of 80 cm (32 inches).

Identifying a knit stitch

In the picture above the next 2 stitches on the left-hand needle are knit stitches. Do you see how they form little V-shapes? Therefore, if the first stitch on the left-hand needle has a V hugging the base of it, then it is a knit stitch and you knit it.

Identifying a purl stitch

In this picture the next 2 stitches on the left-hand needle are purl stitches. The characteristic to identify it, is the little horizontal bar or bump just below where the stitch joins the needle. Therefore, if the first stitch on the left-hand needle has a horizontal bar hugging the base of it, then it is a purl stitch and you are to purl it.

And that’s all there is to “knit the knits and purl the purls”!

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tutorial – working a bobble from 3 rows below

Bobbles are a lovely way to add texture to a knitting project. I’ve used them myself to add interest to an otherwise rather plain stockinette shawl body in my Moerbei shawl. They’re also rather popular as an extra design element on cabled sweaters.

In the basis a bobble is nothing more than a single stitch that is increased to a collection of stitches (usually 3, 5, or 7 stitches), worked back and forth and then decreased back again to a single stitch. There are, however, many ways to go about this.

In this tutorial I’m focusing on a specific kind of bobble that is described in the Japanese Knitting Stitch Bible by Hitomi Shida. It’s worked in stockinette stitch on a background of reverse stockinette by working in a stitch 3 rows down. Read on for more details!

Materials used

Yarn: Paintbox Yarns Simply DK, a good value, good quality 100% acrylic yarn, here in the color 142 Tea Rose.

Needles: KnitPro Zing Fixed Circular Needles. In this tutorial, I used the 4 mm (US 6) size with a cable length of 80 cm (32 inches).

Working a bobble from 3 rows below step by step

1. First, work in your piece of knitting to the point where you want to make the bobble. Remember, this bobble is worked on a background of reverse stockinette, so the purl side is the right side of the work.

2. Next we have to insert the right-hand needle into the center of the stitch, 3 rows down from the next stitch on the needle. I’ve indicated it with the yarn needle.

3. Move the working yarn to the back of the work (we’re working the bobble itself in stockinette, not in reverse stockinette!) ….

4. … and insert the right-hand needle right through the stitch to the back of the work!

Working a bobble from 3 rows below step 4

5. Now wrap the yarn around the needle and pull up a loop through the fabric.

Working a bobble from 3 rows below step 5

6. Wrap the yarn around the needle to form a yarn over.

Working a bobble from 3 rows below step 6

7. Repeat steps 4 and 5 once to make a 3 stitch bobble, or repeat steps 4 to 6 followed by steps 4 and 5 once again for a 5 stitch bobble. Pictured below is how it looks after working these steps for a 5 stitch bobble.

8. Next, drop the next stitch on the left-hand needle. It won’t ladder down below the bobble, because the stitch is secured by pulling the yarn through the fabric in the steps above.

9. Now work in pattern to the end of the row. You can see in the picture below, that I worked a 5 stitch bobble on the right and a 3 stitch bobble on the left.

Onwards to the next row

10. Turn the work and again work in pattern (knit) until you reach the bobble loops. Those we work in purl, because we’re looking at the wrong side of the work here.

11. This is how it looks after working this row. You can see the bobble stitches more easily now, because they are purled.

12. Again work in pattern to the bobble stitches. Now we have to decrease these 5 stitches back to 1 stitch. To do so, I have slipped the first 3 stitches together knit wise to the right-hand needle, worked a k2tog, and then passed the 3 slipped stitches over the result of the k2tog. This is the result of that decrease:

14. For the 3 stitch bobble I worked a sl2-k1-p2sso decrease. This is the result:

15. And this is how these bobbles look after 2 more rows in reverse stockinette have been worked. See how much fatter the 5 stitch bobble is when compared with the other one? You can, of course, work even fatter bobbles this way. Just repeat steps 4-6 twice or thrice instead of only once.

And this how to do it!

Found this tutorial useful? Tag me with @la_visch on Instagram or @lavischdesigns on Facebook if you’ve used it in a project!

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tutorial – working an Estonian 3-into-3 star stitch

Estonian knitting, especially the lace knitting, is quite a bit different from other types of lace knitting. This is in a large part due to combination of openwork and texture that is the most prominent feature of Estonian lace knitting. You may have heard of the book * Pitsilised Koekirjad by Leili Riemann, for those interested in Estonian lace knitting, it’s a true treasure trove!

Anyway, often-used design elements include nupps and gathers. Another type of stitch that’s often used is the star stitch. This is the generic name for the type of stitch where interesting patterns are created by making 3 stitches out of 3; or 5 stitches out of 5 and then purling all stitches on the next row.

It’s also possible to decrease or increase stitches this way, by, for example, making 3 stitches out of 5, or 9 out of 5. Increasing with the star technique can be used to start flower-like lace shapes by first increasing 5 stitches to 9 (or 11) and over the next couple of rows gently decreasing the extra stitches away again.

Focus of this tutorial

In this tutorial I will focus on a basic 3-into-3 star stitch on a stockinette background. A 3-into-3 star stitch is made by knitting 3 stitches together without dropping stitches from left-hand needle; yarn over, knit the same 3 stitches together again before dropping it all from the left-hand needle.

When worked in the yarn-needle combination shown here, the results will be a nicely textured fabric. When worked with relatively large needles for the yarn chosen, a more lacy effect will be the result.

Materials used

Yarn: * Paintbox Yarns Simply DK, a good value, good quality 100% acrylic yarn, here in the color 155 Vintage Pink.

Needles: * KnitPro Zing Fixed Circular Needles. In this tutorial, I used the 4 mm (US 6) size with a cable length of 80 cm (32 inches).

Working an Estonian 3-into-3 star stitch step by step

1. First, work your way across the row until you’ve reached the point where you want to make the star stitch.

2. Next, insert the tip of the right-hand needle into the first 3 stitches at the same time as if to knit.

Step 2 in working an Estonian star stitch

3. Wrap the yarn around the needle and pull it through the stitches you inserted the right-hand needle in. Don’t drop the stitches off the left-hand needle yet!

Step 3 in working an Estonian star stitch

4. Wrap the yarn around the right-hand needle to form a yarn over.

5. Again, insert the tip of the right-hand needle into the 3 stitches at the same time as if to knit.

Step 5 in working an Estonian star stitch

6. Again, wrap the yarn around the needle and pull it through the stitches you inserted the right-hand needle in.

7. Now you can drop the stitches off the left-hand needle to finish the star stitch.

And this is how it looks after 3 more rows in stockinette have been worked, with 2 star stitches in a single row. Pretty, isn’t it?!

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tutorial – correcting a wrongly worked purl stitch

If you’ve ever worked some sort of patterning in your knitting, you know it can happen easily: a short distraction. And when your attention is somewhere else a purl stitch is worked instead of knit stitch, or vice versa. It may even be that you won’t notice it until several more rows or rounds have been worked.

Personally, I have a very big aversion against ripping out my work, just because I made a little mistake a couple of rows back. I mean, it certainly is an option, but I consider it to be more of a last resort type of option.

So, in this tutorial I’ll show you how to deal with a wrongly worked purl stitch that should have been a knit stitch.

Materials used

Yarn: * Paintbox Yarns Simply DK, a good value, good quality 100% acrylic yarn, here in the color 142 Tea Rose.

A crochet hook in the same size or slightly smaller than your knitting needles. For example this * Pony Aluminum Crochet Hook in size 4 mm.

Fixing the wrongly worked stitch step by step

In this example, 2 stitches next to each other are purled instead of knitted in the stockinette fabric. Since there are only 2, I correct them one by one and not at the same time.

1. First, slip the stitches purl-wise from the left-hand needle to the right-hand needle, until you reach the first wrong stitch.

2. Drop this stitch and ladder down up to and including the purl stitch.

3. Since we want to create stockinette stitch fabric, we now insert the crochet hook through the correct stitch directly below the laddered-down purl stitch from the front to the back.

4. Next, ladder your way up again by inserting the crochet hook underneath the horizontal thread directly above the hook, and pulling the thread through the loop already on the hook to make a new knit stitch. Repeat this until all horizontal threads have been worked. After this you can place the stitch back unto the knitting needle.

5. Next, repeat steps 1 to 4 for the next wrongly worked purl stitch. The result should look something like this:

Fixing the wrongly worked stitch step 5.

But what if I need to fix a knit into a purl?

Good question! Well, as you know the wrong side of a knit stitch is a purl stitch and vice versa. So, the easiest way to fix the reverse situation as pictured in this tutorial, is to just turn your work so the wrong side is facing! This way you’ve got the exact situation as pictured here.

If you do want to ladder up a purl stitch, do the following:

1. To start, move the next horizontal thread directly above the stitch from the back to the front of the work.

2. Next, insert the crochet hook into the stitch from the back to the front, grab the loose thread and pull it through the stitch on the hook.

If you’d like pictures with these last steps, take a look at the second part of my tutorial on how to fix a dropped stitch in garter stitch.

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tutorial – the k3tog tbl left-leaning double decrease

In another post I’ve already showed you how to work the sl1-k2tog-psso left-leaning double decrease. In this tutorial I’ll show you another way to reduce 3 stitches down to 1 stitch in a left-leaning way: knit 3 together through the back loop, or k3tog tbl for short.

This decrease requires fewer steps than the sl1-k2tog-psso one, but it can be a tad fiddly to work. And while the result may look a tad different, in most patterns it really won’t matter that much which specific left-leaning double decrease you use. So, just try it out and use the one that works best for you.

Materials

Yarn: * Paintbox Yarns Simply DK, a good value, good quality 100% acrylic yarn, here in the color 128 Lime Green.

Needles: * KnitPro Zing Fixed Circular Needles. In this tutorial, I used the 4 mm (US 6) size with a cable length of 80 cm (32 inches).

Working a k3tog tbl step by step

1. First, work your way across the row until you’ve reached the point where you want to make the decrease. In this case, I want to work the double decrease over the 3 stitches in the middle of the swatch.

2. To start, insert the right-hand needle knit wise (from right to left) into the back loop of the next 3 stitches on the left-hand needle.

3. Wrap the yarn around the needle…

4. … and pull it through the 3 stitches.

5. To finish the k3tog tbl decrease, slide the original 3 stitches off the left-hand needle.

The below picture shows how it looks after 2 more decrease rows have been worked.

tutorial – the k3tog tbl left-leaning double decrease Read More »