Increasing Knit Stitches

So, we’ve cast on our stitches and knitted our rows, and now we find that we need to increase our number of stitches.  There are a number of clever variants, but basically it boils down to six ways to do this:

1.  We can do a yarn-over (yo), whereby we simply wrap the yarn around the needle (once) without knitting it.  When we come back with our purl row (for stockinette), we purl this yarn-over.  Now we have an extra stitch, but we also have a hole, which is fine if we’re making eyelet or lace. 

But what if we don’t want a hole?

2.  We can turn one stitch into two by knitting into the back of the stitch and then into the front of the same stitch before dropping it off the left needle.  Sometimes instructions will tell you to knit into the front first and then knit into the back.  This technique is called a bar increase because the second stitch has a little bar at its base, which makes it easy to count.  

3.  We can also turn one stitch into two by knitting into the front of the stitch and then purling into the front of the same stitch before dropping it off the left needle.  This technique is called a moss increase.  

Or we can pick up an extra stitch in one of three places:

4.   We can knit into the horizontal bar between the stitch on our right needle and the stitch on our left needle.  This will act similar to the yarn-over, but will leave a smaller hole in the work.  (If we knit into the back of this bar, the hole will be slightly diminished, but still visible.)  This technique is called a raised increase.

5.   We can knit into the top loop of the stitch below the stitch on our left needle.  This is called a lifted increase.

6.   Or we can knit into the top loop of the stitch below the stitch on our right needle.  This is also called a lifted increase.

There are subtle visual distinctions among these six basic methods of increasing.  Tomorrow we’ll explore them in detail, beginning with the yarn-over.