The Knitting Fiend

Question posted to a knitting email list: “How do you count rows and stitches when knitting?”

Answered by Joan of knitlist flame (but posted to knitflame):

“one……….two……………three…………..four…………..”

There you go!

Ok. You knew that when you posted your question to an email list. Anyway, I’d have to be pretty dim to think I’ve answered your real question by giving such an idiotic reply .

Your real question is: How do you count efficiently? After all, you don’t want to just count, you want to keep track of stitches and rows as you knit while watching tv or chatting with your friends. You don’t want to have to keep counting over and over and over again and you want to be able to check whether you’ve made a mistake.

Well, I took a photograph of my solution. I’m knitting my raglan; the instructions tell me to:

• *work 1 decrease round, work 3 rounds even* repeat from * 6 times, then
• *work 1 decrease round, work 1 round even* repeat from * 8 times.

To make it easy to keep track of my row count, and the number of times I’ve repeated, I thread a tapestry needle with yarn, and thread the yarn in the row just below each decrease round. You can see the yarn twining up that raglan slant in the photo.

Of course, I could record this on paper, but I tend to have trouble finding the scraps of paper in the bottom of my knitting bag. Plus, I’ve been known to misplace the paper if I take the knitting in the car.

If you look at the photo, you can see I have another trick. In a few rounds, the instructions tell me to divide for the center front. I’m going to need to locate the center 13 stitches on the front and place them on a stitch holder. Notice I’ve threaded a tapestry needle and marked every 10th stitch between the underarms? That helps me keep keep track. I can easily double check that there really are 10 stitches between each mark, and correct if necessary. Finding the 13 center stitches is going to be a snap.

I don’t know about you, but I constantly get interrupted when I count, and I like to use tricks.

However, as a knitting blogger, I do find one big disadvantage to using my tricks: It makes it difficult to snap attractive “in progress” photos to post. All those threads look like heck!

Still, if you’re willing to tolerate strings hanging all over your knits, you can use this trick. Or if you know a better one, tell me, and I can steal your tricks!