Advanced Knitting Techniques for Everyone
4 knitting techniques for the intermediate knitter
The basic knitting techniques that all knitters use include:
1. Casting on - putting the new stitches for a project onto a knitting needle
2. Knitting - doing the knit stitch
3. Purling - doing the purl stitch
4. Binding or casting off - finishing the project by freeing the needles
If you have mastered all of those knitting techniques, it's probably time to move on to a few more advanced knitting techniques.
ADVANCED KNITTING TECHNIQUES
1. Increasing. This is the knitting technique of increasing the number of stitches that there are in a row, in order to make a knitted item wider or bigger. You do this knitting technique by beginning to knit the stitch as usual, but after you wrap the yarn around, instead of taking the stitch off the left-hand needle, you then knit into the BACK of the stitch, wrap the yarn around again, and slip both 'stitches' off onto the right-hand needle. Voila - two stitches!
2. Decreasing. This knitting technique is used in order to decrease the number of stitches in a row (to make a row narrower or shorter). To do this particular knitting technique, you pick up TWO stitches from the left-hand needle instead of one, and knit into both together, creating one stitch from two.
You can see illustrations or watch a video of either of these knitting techniques here.
MORE ADVANCED KNITTING TECHNIQUES
3. Cable knitting. This knitting technique allows you to make 'raised' patterns on knitted objects - figure 'eights,' for example. The cable knitting technique involves moving some stitches to be 'held' onto a separate needle, then knitting a particular number of the stitches next to those, then knitting the stitches you held back. For example, 'C3R' means to move two stitches onto a cable needle and hold it at the back of the work, knit the next stitch, then knit the two stitches from the cable needle.
4. Pick up and knit. This knitting technique is usually used to add a border to an edge of a finished knitted piece. It makes a very neat 'finish' without having to sew a seam. To do this knitting technique, you
- insert the tip of the right-hand needle into the space between first and second stitch in from the edge (making sure you're working on the right side).
- wrap your yarn around the needle.
- then pull the loop through to the front.
- repeat these steps all along the edge you're adding to.
Enjoy using these intermediate knitting techniques in some new projects!
