How to :: Saving my Knitting :: Part II :: Picking up Dropped Stitches – Fast.

Knitting experiences, especially early on, are scared by all sorts of odd ball issues. During my year and a half (or so) at the Yarn Exchange I came to realize that dropped stitches were the number one culprit of all time. They would stop knitters dead in their tracks. And after teasing out a stitch and pulling things here and there and trying to get it on the needles again so it’s the right way, they would give up. Put it in their ufo pile and wait until we were open again to come get it figured out. I had also seen many knitter struggle to find the one lone crochet hook in their bag and struggle to get that lone stitch up on the needles with the rest of its little stitch buddies. There had to be an easier way. And there is. I believe it was the woman who really helped me progress in my knitting that showed me how to just knit your dropped stitches back on. It was so easy, it made so much sense. And for the non-crocheter, it didn’t entail utilizing that unfamiliar little hook.

Here is what you do:

First, woops, my stitch is dropped. At this point it’s easy, just slide it back on to your needle and your golden. But if it goes down a row….

That’s when you could have a real problem. The first step is to find the stitch that was dropped. It’s easy to see here, but with fuzzy yarns, sometimes it can be really sneaky. Like it found a cookie and is trying to run off and eat it before someone notices. Anyway, it will be a little loop like the one pictured here, in any yarn form.

Grab it with your right hand needle.

Slip it onto your left hand needle and make sure it’s not twisted.

Identify the “bar” (the yarn that came loose that used to be the stitch), and knit the stitch on the left hand needle that you just picked up with the bar of yarn.

Like so.

And there you go.

Now just knit your way along like nothing happened. Hooray!

Sometimes a real travesty can strike and a stitch runs away, several rows down. Don’t reach for that crochet hook quite yet. Hold on. Grab the stitch (I just pinch it like in the picture a lot of times to make sure it doesn’t go any farther).

You can see all the bars, one bar for each row the stitch dropped.

Now just like before, grab that stitch with your right needle and slip it onto the left.

Now knit the bottom bar. So if row 6 is the row you are supposed to be on, there are bars for row 6, 5, and 4 and the dropped stitch is now at row 3. Knit the row 4 bar.

Here’s the back so you can see what’s going on. I just knit the row 4 bar.

Knit row 5 bar.

Slip the stitch back to the left hand needle so you can knit through the stitch you just picked up.

Knit row 6 bar.

And there you go.

Now we have another problem. It’s all wonky and stretched out where we picked up stitches.

Just put your needle into the stitch next to the ones you picked up and tease it out so they all have the same tension

And beautiful!

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I’m really sorry I didn’t post yesterday, not even a “i’m not going to post” post. I realized yesterday morning that if I wanted to submit some designs to Knit Scene, I would have to send it out today to get it there by the deadline. So start to finish, plus working at Stam for 4 1/2 hours, I designed, swatched, and prepped 3 sweater designs and some matching accessories. I was up way too late and then got up and finished and dropped it at the post before work. Here’s to hoping I get in!

So I’m really sorry I ditched you folks, but I think that it will (hopefully) be worth it. I just had “it’s due on monday” in my mind so I thought I had the weekend to work on it. So when I reviewed it yesterday morning I realized, no, not due by monday for working on it, due by monday when it has to be at their office! Which means the last day to send it was today. It’s done though and I feel pretty good about it. I’m hoping they take a sweater, but I would be happy with the hat or the scarf/hat set or the leg warmer idea. I gave them a lot to work with. They are a great magazine and I would be so honored to get another design in their publication.

In other news, I am taking a spinning class and the first class was going to be tonight but it was postponed until tomorrow. And I work tomorrow. So I’m just going to preemptively postpone the pattern until Saturday. I’m going to do a two for one kind of post. The pattern will be for laundry bags and so I’ll cover my progress on the Apartment Redress Laundry Days project too (which was supposed to be today).

Oh and I post 3 more things on ebay and after I finish this post I’m going to put up my last two items of this batch. So make sure to go check it out. I was planning on adding more kits to the shop yesterday, but that was tossed aside, so I’m hopeful for the weekend.

Happy Halloween! Have fun trick or treating and watching scary movies and doing autumn related projects and such!

Happy Crafting!
Kristin