The Knitting Fiend

When I showed how to anchor stitches to rip stockinette safely. The main idea was to weave a strand of yarn across a full row of stitches before ripping. You can then rip down to that row, insert the needle and never drop any stitches.

I showed how to anchor the easiest stitch (stockinette) which prompted Molly to ask:

Any tips for setting an anchor row for patterned stitches as opposed to stockinette? That always kicks my arse.

Yep! You anchor them pretty much the “same way”. The only trick is learning to identify the legs of the stitches when you are seeing two purl bars. Because this part can be difficult, I recently described how to anchor garter stitch; that’s the second easiest stitch to anchor. Now, to show what to do for more complicated knit/purl combinations, I knit a swatch in “double seed stitch” (see above left) and anchored a row.

The first step in anchoring is to find the legs of the stitches. When you first look at your swatch, it will seem impossible to see the vertical legs on the purl side of a stitch. The purl bars above and the purl bars below hide. But, if you stretch the swatch gently to pull the purl-bars you can see the vertical legs.

To anchor and keep the stitches correctly seated, you’ll want to insert a tapestry needle tip under the right leg of each stitch and over the left leg. I’ve highlighted the right legs in the photo to the left.

Above to the left I am weaving the tapestry needle under the right legs and over the left legs of two knit stitches. Then, I continue weaving under-over -under-over the legs of the next two stitches, which appear as purl on this side. In a very real sense, what I am doing is “exactly the same”; however, it looks different because the purl bars really want to shrink closed over the needle. I find I need to pull to see the vertical legs of the stitches while I do this.

To fully anchor the row, I repeat this across the row, drawing yarn through as I need to. When I’ve got all the stitches anchored, I can rip safely! I bet you can too.