Look & Learn: How to Spot Mistakes in Your Knitting

Hi guys, Mary Beth Temple here for The Knitting Circle. And in this video, we're going to learn how to spot mistakes in our knitting, because I don't care how long you've been knitting or how experienced you are. We all make mistakes. And the sooner you can spot them, the sooner you can fix them, and the less knitting you have gone past the mistake, the easier they are to fix. So let's take a look at how to spot mistakes in our knitting.

I'm going to point out a few very common mistakes that one might find in their knitting. The first thing I want to say, which I have stolen from a dear friend of mine, who is also a designer who says, particularly when you're a beginner you should often hold up your work and admire it By which I mean, take a look at it. The only way to find a mistake, if you don't notice while you're actually knitting, is to take a look at your work. You want everything to be symmetrical and even, if that's the kind of stitch pattern you're working, and I'm assuming if you're watching this video, that you're mostly doing symmetrical and evening, even things. So let's take a look at a couple of things that can happen.

This, for example this stitch is misshapen and it's sticking out. But if I pull it apart sideways, I can see there's no extra stitch in there. There's no extra anything in there. I probably snagged it. I probably snagged it on something in my knitting bag, or it's possible that, you know, the cat sat on it or, or what have you.

So all I'm going to do to fix something like that is give a tug to the stitches on either side of it and let it blend back in. And of course also blocking saves you from a multitude of sins. Looking at my work, let's see, what else have we got going on, oh, over here. I either purled when I should have knitted, or I knitted when I should have purled. Now, if I find a mistake like that, likely what I'm going to do is drop that one stitch on purpose, I'll knit until I get to it, I'll drop it all the way down until I can undo that mistake.

And then I'm gonna grab my crochet hook and fix that drop stitch, and we do have a video on drop stitches for you. See what else is going on here. I'm admiring my work, I'm admiring my work. Uh, what's going on here? I have this weird little gap and I have a column of stitches starting seemingly out of nowhere.

That happens frequently when you have accidentally, you're knitting across the row and you pick up the horizontal bar between the two stitches. So you can tell that that is what happened here. One, you have an eyelet that you didn't ask for, but two, look, I've got my column of stitches. You see my column all lined up, and then here's my other column of stitches lined all up. And they're next to each other down here.

This guy doesn't have a column, so he probably doesn't belong there. So in that case, what I'm likely to do is slide on over to where he is. And just drop him. Let him come out. Now, that stitch is a little tight, that stitch is a little tight.

Again, I can fix that with my needle tip or I can assume that will come out in blocking. So that is another pretty easy mistake to make and to see and to fix. Now, let's see, uh, I got something going on over here! It feels like a little knot, a little lumpy. It's a little lumpier than the other ones.

And you can see what happened is his little legs are crossed. That stitch is a twisted stitch where I didn't want a twisted stitch. You can see the other guys are nice and relaxed and the legs of the stitches are right next to each other but this guy's got his legs crossed and we don't want that. So again, what I would do if that's just that one stitch is wrong, when I knit to it, I'm going to pop it off my needle, I'm going to drop it, I'm gonna ladder it down, and then I'll pick it up with a crochet hook like I show you in the other video and make that fix fixed and look like his neighbors. The other thing I want to point out if you are a brand new knitter, it really helps to count your stitches at the end of the row.

If you're supposed to have 20 and you have 19 or you have 23, it's not, then obviously something's wrong on there. And the sooner you can spot a mistake, the easier it is to fix. So this guy here, for example, this is a yarn over. This is an inadvertent yarn over. And I can tell because that yarn right there it's in this stitch and it's in this stitch.

But again, here's a column, Here's a column, here is not a column, so I don't want him. So what I would do in that case and I would particularly do this if I had a smaller weight yarn. I'm gonna go over and just let him drop. Now, that's going to make that stitch a little bit bigger and that stitch a little bit bigger, but again, I can deal with it in blocking or I can go in with my needle tip like I did down here, and pull some of that extra. Divide up some of that extra yarn amongst that stitch's neighbors so that one doesn't look enormous compared to the other ones.

And again, I'm likely to do that after I block, because blocking solves a multitude of sins. And so I, if I still see it after blocking, then I would worry about it. And then the last one, I want to show you, the other thing now, I'm on a circular needle right now, particularly if you're on a straight needle, if you hold your stitches up, and while you've counted them, it's like teeth on a comb. Have you ever looked at a barber comb? If there's a tooth missing, man, your eye goes right to it.

So you can tell over here, I've got an extra loop here that did not belong. Now since it's active on this side and this side, but not that stitch, as opposed to the other one I just showed you, then I know that that is a stitch that was not completed. When I get to it, I'm gonna pull that loop through the working loop and get that back up on the needle, and we have a separate video for you on how to fix that. And that's what you do when you have an incomplete stitch or you have not pulled the loop all the way through. Now, feel free to go forth and make all the mistakes you want now that you can find them and we can fix them.

I'm Mary Beth Temple for The Knitting Circle. Thanks so much for joining me. I'll see you around real soon.