Picking Up a Dropped Stitch in Stockinette Stitch

Hi guys, Mary Beth Temple here, once again on behalf of The Knitting Circle. And in this video we're going to take a closer look at how to pick up stitches that have been dropped, when you're working in stockinette stitch. It's not that hard to do, and as soon as you see this visual you'll be able to do it too. So let's get right to it. So this is the nightmare of a dropped stitch. When a stitch drops, I mean, you have knitted or pearled it whatever you were supposed to do and it fell off the needle tip. And what it tends to do is unravel down. Now, this is enormous because I'm using chunky yarn and I like to use chunky yarn so you can see what I'm doing, but this can happen in any weight yarn with any weight in needles. So, what do I do when I see this little nightmare happening? I'm going to show you two different ways to fix this. And this is of course in stockinette stitch. You want to do what I just did out of habit which is pull the work side to side. And the reason you want to do that is you're going to work with each of these rungs of the ladder, but you want to make sure you get them in order. If you do not, then your work will be twisted. It will not be attractive. So all you need to do is grab that stitch that is still active. You've pulled your work from side to side, so you're going to see the next rung of the ladder that's over and you're going to put it there. And then you can grab that other needle tip bring the worked stitch over the unworked stitch and then go for the next rung of the ladder. Again, if you're confused, if they're twisted you don't know which one is which pull it sideways and you can see that's my next guy. Now you do not have to use the knitting needle that you're knitting with. Like, this is a circular and I'm using two sides of the circular, so I don't have three needles on camera and make everything confused. You can just grab a spare needle if you want if you don't want to mess with that guy. So find the next rung of the ladder, put it on the end of your needle, grab the worked stitch and pull it over the ladder rung. Now here's an easier way to do it. If you happen to have a crochet hook laying around and I know some knitters don't like to crochet but I am an equal opportunity yarnest. Take that needle out, put a crochet hook in that loop. And then look, I can just grab the next rung, pull it through, grab the next rung, pull it through, grab the next rung, pull it through. And so if you have a big drop, like I did here in my example, having a crochet hook makes it go much faster. Now the crochet hook does not have to be the same gauge as the knitting needle was and in fact, a little smaller is probably better so you can get in there. If you find that you're picked up column of stitches looks a little smaller, not quite the same gauge as the stitches on either side of it, generally speaking that's something that will get fixed when you block your piece. So I'm going to now, I got to get that live stitch back up on the needle where it belongs. So I can see that it belongs between these two stitches. So I'm just going to get my needle over there When I picked this guy up. So there's my two legs of the stitch. There's the left leg and there's the right leg. I want to make sure the right leg is in the front. So there's my stitch back up on the needle. I'm going to slip these guys back on And then just knit, like I regularly would. You can also knit up to the drop stitch and then pick it up and then pop it right on the end of the needle. Again, sometimes I find that a little fiddly. I like to pick them up as soon as I see that drop stitch, I want to get it back up on the needle where it belongs, but here it is, this is our guy that we picked up. And at this point, even without blocking you can't even tell where it was. So you can use either your needle tips or you can use a crochet hook. See that wasn't hard at all. I knew you could do it! I'm Mary Beth Temple here on behalf of The Knitting Circle. Please check out our other videos and see what there is to see here on the site. I'll see you later. Bye-bye.