Eyelet Rib Pattern

When it comes to ribbing patterns, there's literally hundreds of combinations to choose from. There's so many combinations of knits and purls that you can put together to make a ribbing fabric, but one thing I really love to do is make decorative ribbing patterns, and that's what I'm gonna show you. I'm gonna show you how to make an eyelet rib pattern, and this specifically is a large eyelet rib pattern. I have my swatch here, and you can see that in my column of knit stitches, I have these large eyelets. So you're working a lot of knit four, purl two ribbing, but then every few rows, we're gonna add in our eyelet row. And it makes something just really decorative. It's interesting. This would be fun to put on the bottom of a hat or maybe the cuff of a sweater. I think it's just really, really lovely, and it's a really fun stitch pattern. So we're gonna work this flat back and forth in rows. And so you're gonna need a multiple of six stitches plus two. So I have that on the needle here. And we're gonna go ahead and work one setup row. And I'm going to work on the wrong side, and I'm going to knit two, purl four all the way across, ending with a knit two. So we finished that wrong side row, and now we're ready to start our four-row repeating pattern. So to do that, we're gonna purl two, knit four all the way across. So row one is purl two, knit four to the last two stitches, purl two. And what's great about this stitch pattern is really once you're established, you're kind of just knitting the knits and purling the purls. And what do I mean by that? Here it looks like a knit stitch right underneath it, so we're gonna knit. And then when we come to our purl stitches, the stitch below looks like a purl, so we're gonna purl it. So that completes row one, which was a right-side row. And now for row two, and actually just like that starting row we did, we're doing the same thing, where we're gonna knit two, purl four to the last two stitches, knit two. Once we're done with this row, then the fun begins. So the first two rows really are just sorta the setup to where we're gonna work the eyelet. So now for row three, we're ready to create the eyelet, and we're gonna do that by decreasing and increasing. So let me show you. We're gonna purl two. And then when we get to where we were knitting four, we're going to knit two together, yarn over twice. So once, twice around the needle. Slip, slip, knit. And we'll keep repeating that all the way down. Purl two, knit two together, yarn over twice, slip, slip, knit, and then purl two. And we have one more to do. Knit two together, yarn over twice, slip, slip, knit, ending with the purl two. Now we're on row four, which is the last row of our four-row repeat. And you might be thinking, "Okay, are we gonna just keep doing the same thing we've been doing on the wrong sides?" And that's doing our knit two, purl four all the way across. And the thing is, we can't actually do that. Because we did two yarn overs together, we have to treat it a little bit differently, or else the whole thing's gonna come unraveled. So let me show you what I mean. So we're gonna still start with that knit two. And now when we get to where we previously had been purling four on the wrong side, we're gonna purl two and then knit one, purl one. And the reason that we did that is to lock the stitch in place. So what do I mean by that? Let's go to the next one. So I've purled one. So here I've come to my double yarn over. I'm gonna purl this first one. I still have one more yarn over left 'cause I had the two yarn overs together. If I try to just purl into this again, all that happens is I've made this big loop, and actually you can see the yarn's just wrapping around my needle. I've just created really a mess and created one big loose stitch rather than two separate stitches. So if I just back that out, there's the purl from the first yarn over. I'm bringing the yarn to the back, and now I've knit it, and that allows you to keep your stitch count correct, and you've kept your yarn over nice and open, and you have your two stitches there. So let's do that just one more time. Gonna purl two so the second purl is going into the first yarn over. And then we're bringing the yarn to the back to knit one and purl, knit two. So you would just keep repeating those four rows, and you would have a lovely large eyelet rib pattern.