Make one increase between knit and purl stitch

#1

I’m teaching myself to knit from the book Basic Knitting: All the Skills and Tools You Need to Get Started and I’m practicing my stitches on the teddy bear sweater pattern.

In the pattern it says to knit 4 rows of 1x1 ribbing and in the last row increase 2 stitches before the 10th and 20th stitch. It recommends the make one left and make one right increase.

My problem is that on a regular knit or purl row I can see the ladder easily and pick it up for the increase but in between a knit and purl row, the ladder looks twisted and I don’t know which end to pick up.
The demonstrations and instructions for these increases in the Basics section of the book show only how to do the increase on a knit or purl row and not a 1x1 rib. I checked the videos here and there doesn’t seem to be one that shows how to make the increase between a knit and purl.

Its probably something simple but its driving me crazy. Can anyone explain?

Thanks!

#2

What you are picking up is a little strand of yarn that runs from the last stitch on your RH needle to the first stitch on your LH needle. If you have trouble seeing it you can pull the needles apart a bit so that it shows up better.

For the right slanting inc you pick that strand up onto the LH needle by lifting the strand from behind. Then knit into it the front of the loop so that it twists. For the left slanting one pick the strand up with the LH needle from in front and then knit into the back loop to twist it.

All that being said it probably doesn’t need to be that picky in this instance. If you do them both the same it wouldn’t ever be noticeable. I often use a simple backward loop inc in this situation. It works on the human sweaters I’ve done. :slight_smile: But this is a good chance to practice the other M1 if you want to.

#3

The problem is that between the knit and purl stitches there are two strands of yarns coming from the stitch on the RH needle to the one on the LH needle and they crisscross so I don’t know which one to pick up.

#4

There should only be one strand between those sts. Can you post a picture of what you have? When you move the yarn from the front to the back of your work for switching from a purl to knit, are you moving it [I]between[/I] the needles.? If you move it over the needle that’s when you’re likely to get crisscross sts, not to mention adding extra ones.

#5

I don’t have a camera but I’ll see if I can borrow one. I’m moving the yarn around the point of the needle.

#6

If you have a cell phone with a camera and can send pictures to an email, that’s a handy way to do it. I can’t always find our camera, the batteries, my memory chip… and then I lose interest in it. But when I can take it with my phone, it’s a lot easier.

#7

My DH took some pictures for me of what the strand you pick up looks like. This first picture shows how it looks between a knit and a purl stitch. The red arrow is pointing to the strand you pick up with your left needle.

And this one shows the strand you pick up with your left needle between a purl and a knit. I don’t know that they look much different, but we took both in case it helps.

#8

Thanks Merigold, those pics really help.

After looking at your pics, I looked through the Make One videos here and realized the cross I was seeing were the strands of the stitches, my ladder was just really short, so it looked like the ladder was crossing.

Of course, I got impatient with that row and did two raised increases instead which look pretty decent. So now I’m on the k2tog decreases.