I’m VERY new to knitting, but I’ve been crocheting for several years. I thought I had mastered the knit & purl stitch, but when I tried to do a simple ribbed piece it has the knit stitches in the front and the purls to the back. I may be saying that wrong, the V’s are behind the part that looks like a garter stitch. I’ve looked at EVERY ribbed sweater I own, and this is backwards of how they look, but I can’t seem to figure out how I’m messing up. Any suggestions?
Can you get a picture to look at? I have no idea how you are doing that either. Unless maybe you offset the rib pattern and ended up with whats called a mistake rib…This is what a mistake rib looks like.
This happens when you offset your rib pattern so that the knits and purls aren’t matching up.
Well, that’s not the mistake, but it does look neat. might try that on purpose one day. I’ll try to get a picture of it tonight (left it at home today) and post it tomorrow. VERY frustrating.
To get ribbing you do knits and purls on the same row - like k2 sts, p2 sts, k2, p2, etc. If all your knits are on one side and all the purls on the other side, that’s stockinette where you knit a whole row of knits, then a whole row of purls and alternate the two rows. Knitting or purling every row gives you garter stitch that has both Vs and bumps on each side, but you have to stretch it a bit to see the knit Vs. The videos on the Tips page under Basic Stitches should you how to get each one and what they look like.
It sounds like you are doing stockinette if the knits are in front and the purls are in back. You get stockinette by knitting one row, turning and purling the next row. Ribbing is a combination of knit and purl stitches on the [U]same[/U] row. To keep the pattern going you knit the knits and purl the purls as they face you. Each stitch as two sides…one is a purl the other is a knit. So if you end your row with say 3 knits when you turn your work to the other side you start with 3 purls.
Here’s an example of what the stitches look like.
My stockinnette looks great, and my garter looks good too. I may have explained my mistake wrong. My piece is done with K2, P2 all the way across to the end, then turn and do the opposite. The problem is more of a texture issue. It seems like my ribs are curling inward instead of outward. does that make sense? I may just need to take a picture to show you.
Unless you’re knitting in the round the ends will curl because they are basically stockinette. What are you making?
The edge stitches probably will curl then because they’re like stockinette. If you’re going to seam that edge that will take care of it, so don’t worry about it while you’re knitting it.
Be sure when you turn that you are knitting the knits (V’s) and purling the purls. If your row begins with k2,p2 when you turn, the next row will start with p2, k2.
Thank you very much to everyone who made suggestions. I think I’ve discovered why I was having problems. I was doing a test strip in what I thought was a ribbing pattern, but I was leaving out a row. I did the K2, *P2 K2 repeat from * to end of row, but then turning and doing the opposite on the next row. After reading all your suggestions and watching the vidoes AGAIN I finally read the instructions again (duh, all my years of crochet should have taught me to do that first) and I was leaving out a row of knit between everything. What I was getting was a rib on the front & the back and it wasn’t laying right. Now I have a smooth back and the rib on the front. BTW, the instructional videos on this site are some of the easiest to follow I’ve ever seen. Kudos!
I’m not an expert, but sometimes when you knit in rib, the true look of the stitch doesn’t emerge until you’ve done several rows. For the first few rows, the purls look like they are going to show prominently, while the knits seem to be receeding. But if you keep going, the purls start to receede and the knits begin to lay on top.
You also might try knitting the rib stitch a little tighter than you might usually knit. Since you’re swinging your knitting thread back and forth to do alternating knit and purl stitches the finished work can sometimes be too loose, which could also make it seem as if the purls are never going to receed to the background like they’re supposed to.
Good luck!
Ah ha!! I think that was my problem alipyper! I was only doing about 4 rows and it didn’t look right to me so I quit. I guess I should have kept going. I did another sample piece and this time instead of doing K2, P2, K2 across then a row of P2 K2 P2 (which is the pattern I did the first sample of) I did a row of K2 P2 K2 repeats then a row of just knit and repeated these two rows for about 3 inches. This looks like what I wanted! Thank you to everyone for your suggestions!