Fixing Knitting Mistakes
Learn how to fix and prevent the most common knitting mistakes!
4/7/20253 min read
Mistakes happen to the best of us. They can be frustrating, but they also provide an opportunity to learn more.
Identifying Common Errors
Sometimes, if you stop knitting in the middle of the row or round, it is easy to get confused about which way you were knitting when you come back to your project. Always look at where your working yarn is connected. It will be connected to the stitch you last worked, so you should continue with the next stitch where the yarn is not connected.
Another common mistake to make is casting on or binding off too tightly. If you have a tendency to cast on too tightly, you could try learning some other methods, or you can cast on around two needles held together. You would pull out the second needle once you’re done with the cast-on and knit the first row in your stitch pattern. If you tend to bind off too tightly, try not to pull the working yarn too snugly as you’re knitting the next stitch. It will take some practice to do this and keep the stitches even. You could also try some other bind-off methods.
Some people may add an accidental yarn over, especially when switching between knits and purls. (The yarn should be brought between the two needles, not over them.) This will look like an extra stitch, it will be very close to or crossed over another stitch. If you knit it like it’s a regular stitch, not only will you have an unwanted increase, but it will leave a hole in the fabric. To fix it, double-check that it is not connected to the row below at all, and you can drop it.
Fixing Dropped Stitches
This is one of the most common problems that happens to every knitter at some point. Fortunately, it’s not too hard to fix once you’ve noticed the dropped stitch. Dropped stitches look like a loop of yarn that isn’t connected to the rows above it. When you first notice it, use a locking stitch marker or safety pin around the loop so that it doesn’t unravel any further. When you get to the column where the stitch was dropped, insert a small crochet hook from front to back. Pull the bar of yarn in between the next two columns through the loop. Repeat that until you are all the way up to your current row and place it on the needle.
Frogging and Tinking
Frogging and tinking are slang terms used in the knitting community for unraveling your work. Tinking is when you undo each stitch individually (“tink” is “knit” spelled backward). To do this, insert your left needle into the stitch below the stitch just worked on the right needle. Pull that stitch off the right needle, and pull the working yarn out of that stitch. Frogging is when you take your needles out of your work and rip it out (get it? “Rip it’ sounds like “ribbit” at least, that’s what I’ve heard). This may be necessary if you find a mistake really far back or if you want to start over. It is possible to get the live stitches back on the needles after frogging some rows, but you must do so carefully. The right leg of the stitch should be in front.
Lifelines
Lifelines are a way to frog your work back to a particular row without worrying about any of those stitches unraveling further. A lifeline is a piece of scrap yarn, thinner than the yarn you’re using in your project, threaded through each stitch of a row. You can do this easily with a tapestry needle. This way, if you need to frog some of your work, you can frog back to the lifeline, which keeps your stitches from unraveling. From there, you can put the stitches in that row back on your needles. When you’re putting the lifeline in, you should be careful not to split the yarn in any of the stitches, and make sure you get through each stitch.
Conclusion
These are some of the most common mistakes and how to fix them. If you have other mistakes and want personalized help, feel free to send me an email or book a call with me. Subscribe to my newsletter for updates on when I will launch my Knitting 101 course!
