OK this is really driving me mad hope someone can help.
I’m working a stockinette fabric with a garter edge (always k1 at the edge, on all sides). When for any reason I need to undo my knitting, for the life of me I just can’t put the garter stitch back in place as it was. The pictures below show how the garter edge stitch looks on a row I had to undo (yellow arrows shows the odd stitch, the lines show the regular stitches with the usual bump). It clearly looks wrong and it has no ‘bump’.
The other pic shows the undone looks like. I need to put it back on the needle and work it but no matter how I pick it up - from front, or back or whatever - it just doesn’t get right once I work my k1.
This is especially a problem when I have to pick up stitches at the edge, as there’s a gap instead of a bump so picking up a stitch there creates a hole. I don’t have to pick up stitches in this project, but still, this is the front edge of a baby cardigan and any mistake is quite prominent, which really annoys me!
I literally searched all over the internet for tutorials but nothing that covers exactly this case… I hope someone can help as I really have no clue!!!
Techknitter has a good article on those pesky edge stitches. See the example for stockinette stitch. You would alternate working a knit on one row, purl on the next. Laying the yarn out like this and pinning it to a blocking mat makes the reknitting easier.
1 Like
I have never been able to fix mistakes at the edge without ripping out all the stitches. That article was very useful - I have book marked it. Thank you.
1 Like
Thank you, but this doesn’t seem to be the same case, unless I’m missing something. I undid a few stitches and tried this method your link suggests but what I get is a line of knit stitches, not the ‘bump’ of garter.
I found this video in the meantime that is focusing on garter edge specifically:
It does exactly what I need and I tried it, but the outcome is still not right, my stitches are super loose, as if there’s some manoeuvre missing… I tried to adjust the tension of the stitches and it improved a bit but looked way worst than just having that one wrong stitch.
I ended up just undoing the whole chunk of work I undid the edge of. I’m so frustrated I can’t find a solution to this as it’s something that occurs so often 
I should have been clearer. You can’t use Techknitter’s method exactly as given. The method is for stockinette. You would need to alternate working one knit row with one purl row in order to get a garter stitch edge. This is easier than trying to flip your knitting front to back over and over so that you repair each stitch as a knit stitch.
I’m glad that you found a method just for garter stitch. If your stitches are all correct, it may be that they would have evened out and settled into the correct tension with washing and blocking. Well, too late now.
I’m sorry that you had to take out the knitting. It’s incredibly frustrating and takes time away from the enjoyment of knitting. Thank you for the video.
1 Like
Oooh that makes more sense then! I’ll probably make a swatch and test out a few techniques as I want to get this right for when it will inevitably occur again. Thanks for your help!
1 Like
Let us know how the swatch goes and here’s hoping you never need the technique again!
