The Knitting Fiend

A Knitting Fiend Forum member was concerned about picking up stitches after ripping. I promised her I’d show her a little trick known to most advanced knitters. When do they learn it? Beats me. This trick isn’t exactly what people call lifelines (which is done while the work is on the needles), but it’s darn close! So, I just call it a lifeline. I mean, what the heck?

Ok, say you need to rip back to a certain row. You’re worried about dropping stitches for whatever reason. All your teacher will tell you is “Don’t worry, it’s not that hard to pick up stitches.” What can you do?

Thread a tapestry needle with contrast yarn of a similar thickness to your project yarn. Now, lay your project down flat. Find the row you would like to rip to. If you have a wide piece of knitting, you may want to mark the bottoms of a few stitches on the far right, left and center of that row– just to verify you have identified a row.

Now, find a stitch in that row — you can start at the selvedge or a bit in to the side and get the selvedge ones later. From front to back, insert the tip of the tapestry needle in the hole just to the right of a stitch take it behind that right hand leg of the stitch, then bring it up through the hole. See the figure below.

When examining the photo, be aware the cast on edge is below the lower edge of the photo. So, I would be planning to rip the rows above the one I am anchoring with yarn.

Also, notice the legs of the stitches; I emphasized one stitch in white. See how the right stitch leg goes in front of the tapestry needle, the left under? Doing it this way will ensure your stitches are “properly seated” (at least from the point of view of people who knit “Western Style” which is the style you’ll find in nearly every knitting book printed in the US, Canada, Australia, And Western Europe.)

What if you insert the tip the other way? When you are done, your stitches will be “improperly seated” . That’s not really a big deal, but to avoid twisting stitches, you may be forced to read “Stockinette Ad Naseum IV: Combination Knitting”. Or, you may immediately figure out how to knit them off to avoid twisting — many knitters do. (BTW, once you’ve mastered knitting twisted stitches, you can say “I’m learning to read my knitting!”)

Ok, enough digressing? Shove the tip under and over a few times, then pull the yarn through. You can see the white yarn drawn through below. Notice the right legs pass front of the yarn, the left legs pass behind the yarn. Repeat until you’ve anchored all the stitches. The sttiches are anchored, you can now rip back safe in the knowledge that you will not rip back too far! After ripping, stick a needle through the loops, remove the yarn and start knitting.

Have any of you wondered, couldn’t you just shove a needle through the stitches and save a step? Yep. I take the extra step of using yarn because it’s flexible; this can be convenient if I need to ripping loads of rows or when I’m knitting circular. In other cases I might just use a needle — flexible circular needles are great for this task.

That’s the lesson!

But I was wondering, have any eagle eyed knitters noticed something odd about the stitches on the needle above the row I anchored? They are seated backwards. Why? Because I did it backwards the first time.

That’s right. Because I have absolutely no problem knitting stitches that sit backwards, I didn’t bother my little head about to worry about the best way to insert the tip until after I took the photos, edited them and started writing the article. Then I thought “That’s dumb! I’m not going to show this backwards and then make knitters read a lesson on how to knit stitches that sit backwards!

I grabbed the camera and spent a couple seconds inserting the needle the more convenient way.

---

Credits: The General helped in during the creation of this lesson. Taiga Farmer’s Daughter Yarn performed the role of “Swatch Yarn/Victim “; this is a heavish-worsted yarn with some surface fuzz. So, I’ll report this a bit later after washing and wearing it pinned under my blouse for a day.

(Oh, and Taiga is having a sale. You can see here: Summer Yarn Sale June 1-10. I have no affiliation with Taiga; The General and I just like the yarn and the prices. )