I did the 3 x 1 ribbing, and had begun the pattern stitch. Now I see a mistake back in the ribbing and I want to rip back about 4 rows or so. Not too bad except I don’t know how to do it while connected to a circular needle. If I pull all the stitches off the needles I can just rip, but how will I be able to tell where the beginning of the round is when the stitch marker falls off? Do I have to tink all these rows? That’s how this mistake happened in the first place, from tinking, dropping a stitch, and not picking it up properly.
The only way other than tinking is to pull the needle out and rip it back to where you want it. You can take a safety pin (I use coil-less) and mark the stitch just below the row you are ripping back to so you’ll know where the beginning of the round is.
Do you know how to tell if a stitch is twisted? If so you can just knit into the back of the stitch to correct it. Here are some pictures I made for this. You can see on the twisted stitch that the back leg is forward or too the right and it should be the front leg.
If your tail from the cast on is right where you change rounds use it and your current marker for the beginning of the rounds to figure out where the first stitch is in the round before you take it off the needles. Sew in a contrast yarn or something to mark where the beginning of the round is.
Then take the needle out and rip back, some people like to rip out so that after they put the needle in they tink the last row. Lots of times I just tink to where I need to be and then put the needle back in starting at the end of the round and inserting it along the round to the first of the round. It can probably be done the other way, that is just what I do. Don’t worry how you get the needle back in (and you might use a circular a size or 2 smaller to pick them back up with, even smaller will work fine). Then as you rib the first row be careful to work into the the back of the stitches if the stitches are on the needle backwards and work in the regular place if they are on right.
It gets to be easy to tell with a little experience which way to work the stitches and it will save your neck many times.
I probably do it a tedious way, but when I see a mistake, I mark the “column” it’s in. Then when I get back around to that spot, I slide it off the needles, cap them with protectors and then carefully pull the stitches out all the way down to the mistake. Then I use a crochet hook to bring them back up. This is the same way you fix a dropped stitch, but I use it for other mistakes, too. If the mistake covers more than two consecutive stitches, I just fix one at a time. This probably doesn’t make any sense!!!
Well, I lost the whole thing and frogged back to the beginning. I knew that would be a possibility and it really wasn’t that much work, only about 2.5 inches. I had marked the beginning stitch and pulled it all off the needles. Then I frogged back to past the mistake but I could not get it back on the needles, even using one 2 sizes smaller. I couldn’t see the loop of the stitch at all. The yarn I’m using is Elann Esprit and it has elastic in it. It’s very springy and it looked like the stitches were stretched just a bit on the needles, so when I took the needle out they snapped back. I have poor eyesight so I’m sure that was part of the problem as well. Oh well, I guess I could use a little more practice in ribbing. :knitting: Thank you for the tips. On just about any yarn without elastic in it I think I would have succeeded.
I suggest using a lifeline. It’ll make things easier when you have to frog. Just move it up every 10 rows or so when you know there are no mistakes below it.
Amy has a video that shows how to rip back to a destination row. http://www.knittinghelp.com/videos/knitting-tips
Scroll down that webpage, and look for “Fixing Mistakes”, then click the video for “Inserting a needle into destination row, [I]before[/I] unraveling”
I will use a lifeline the next time I start it. That definitely would have saved me this time. I did watch that video about inserting the needle before unraveling but I couldn’t have done it. This elastic yarn knits pretty tight … I can’t see individual stitches or rows anymore. Hmmm, maybe I could have stretched it all the way out and been able to see the rows? Next time. Learn by frogging.
