You happily knit and purl, probably while watching your favourite TV series, listening to a thrilling audio book, or chatting with a friend, and then you notice a gaping hole smack in the middle of your project.
Sounds familiar? Well, you are not alone. Every knitter I know, at some point, made this unpleasant discovery.
No one is immune to making mistakes (ask me how I know ), but the hole-making mistakes are more common among beginner knitters. Why? Because beginners don’t yet know what causes those holes to appear.
Let’s change that. In this tutorial, we’ll look into six most common reasons that lead to unwanted holes.
In just a few minutes, you will know what three things to watch for to keep those pesky holes away from your projects.
WATCH EVERY STEP IN THE VIDEO TUTORIAL
REASON #1
This one is a common rookie mistake. It happens when we bring the working yarn over the top of the needle at the beginning of a row.
The yarn moves the top of the stitch up, and we see both legs of the first stitch as if they were separate stitches. Naturally, we assume these are two stitches and work them separately, creating two stitches from the first stitch of the row.
The result is hard to miss. In fact, a small hole is not even the biggest problem. In just a few rows we see that the number of stitches increases. More importantly, we see that one or both edges of the work are slanting outwards, just like the right edge of the swatch pictured below. Ouch!
HOW TO PREVENT THIS MISTAKE
Before you start a row, make sure the working yarn is hanging underneath the needle. If the first stitch of the row is a knit, move the strand to the back of the work.
If the first stitch is a purl, move the strand to the front of the work.
Never ever move the yarn over the needle! This way you will keep the edges of your work straight and nice with no unwanted holes.
REASON #2
The ban on moving the working yarn over the needle should also be in place when we work in the middle of a row or round.
Whenever we need to move the strand from the front of the work to the back and vice versa, we always move it underneath the needle.
As soon as we move it over the needle, we create a yarn over. When this yarn over is made by mistake, it is called an accidental yarn over – one of the most common reasons why we end up with a hole in our project.
Here’s how it looks on the needles.
Most often, this mistake happens in stitch patterns that have knit and purl stitches in the same row or round. We purl a stitch, then we move the yarn to the back of the work for knitting, but we move the strand over the needle, not underneath it. Boom – we’ve got ourselves an accidental yarn over.
HOW TO PREVENT THIS MISTAKE
The cure is the same as the one we use to prevent the mistake we discussed in the Reason #1 section – never ever move the yarn over the needle! Of course, unless you do want to make a yarn over. In all other cases, yarn moved over the needle will result in a mistake.
REASON #3
It’s not just how we move the yarn that matters. What we do with the needles is important as well.
We may move the yarn correctly (underneath the needle and not over the top of it), insert the tip of the right needle into a stitch to knit or purl it, wrap the tip of the right needle with the yarn, and then slip the stitch off the left needle instead of pulling the yarn wrap through to form a new stitch.
If we don’t pay attention, we continue to work on our project. If we are really distracted, we can easily miss this goof in the next row and work the stitch and the unpulled-through yarn wrap as two different stitches.
This results in an unwanted hole and an additional, totally unexpected stitch.
HOW TO PREVENT THIS MISTAKE
The prescription is simple – avoid distractions. If you are new to knitting, or if your project has an intricate stitch pattern, stay away from binge-watching, binge-listening, and binge-talking. Give yourself space to focus on every stitch you make.
More experienced knitters rarely make this mistake because their hands are very familiar with the rhythm of knitting. Muscle memory is a powerful phenomenon. Until you have it developed, avoid distractions while you knit.
REASON #4
This one is sneaky. It does not result in a big hole that we can spot right away. The hole is smaller, and it hides between stitches like a cunning spy.
Usually, the first thing we notice is that somehow we added one stitch to the work.
If the pattern is simple, like stockinette stitch, for example, the “spy stitch” can stay in the project for quite a while before we understand that something is not right.
If the stitch pattern has a repeat of two or more stitches, this impostor will shift the texture, making it, well, different.
How does this “spy” get into our project?
This mistake happens when we accidentally insert the right needle under the strand between the first stitch on the right needle and the first stitch on the left needle, instead of going into the first stitch from the tip of the left needle.
If we go under that strand from back to front, we make a purl.
If we do it from front to back, we end up with an extra knit stitch.
HOW TO PREVENT THIS MISTAKE
Use your fingertips to control where the right needle is going. If you keep the fingers of your left hand on the first stitch on the left needle, you will feel when the right needle gets into that stitch.
If you don’t feel it, pay attention – it is very possible that the right needle went under the strand between the stitches instead of getting into the stitch.
REASON #5
This mistake happens only when we put the work down in the middle of a row. As we pick up the project again to finish that half-row, we can accidentally turn the work and follow the pattern instructions for the wrong-side row of the project.
As a result, we not only get a hole, we also end up with two half-rows that make one side edge of our project longer than its other side edge. Big no-no!
HOW TO PREVENT THIS MISTAKE
Whenever possible, finish a row before you put the project down.
If you have to stop knitting mid-row, remember to check where the working yarn comes from when you pick the project up again. It should always come from the right.
If the yarn is attached to the stitches on the left needle, as it is shown in the photo below, turn the work.
Resume knitting only when the working yarn is attached to the stitches sitting on the right needle.
REASON #6
The last but not least reason that can cause an unexpected hole in our knits is a dropped stitch. It usually shows with a stitch sticking out at the bottom of a hole.
This mistake happens when a stitch accidentally slips off the needle (usually, the left one) and we continue to knit and purl the rest of the stitches without noticing the fugitive.
Unlike the five mistakes we’ve just discussed, this one does not add a stitch to the work. It removes one stitch. This change in stitch count immediately affects the look of any stitch pattern with a repeat of two or more stitches.
Usually, the first thing we notice is that we don’t have enough stitches to finish the pattern repeat at the end of the row.
This quick detection is key, because if we notice the problem in the next row or round, we can easily fix this issue. Here’s a tutorial that explains how to fix a dropped stitch no matter whether it is a knit or a purl.
HOW TO PREVENT THIS MISTAKE
Remember we talked about using our fingertips to feel the stitches (see Reason #4)? This is a sure way to keep all your stitches where they belong – on the needles.
If one stitch runs away, you will spot it immediately and return it to the needles before it causes any problems.
Now that we’ve discussed six most common reasons we get unwanted holes in our projects, we know that the three things we need to pay attention to are:
1. Always move the strand underneath the needle (reasons #1 and #2).
2. Use our fingertips to feel the stitches and ensure that we don’t insert the right needle under the strand between stitches (reason #4), finish knitting or purling a stitch (reason #3), and don’t drop any stitches (reason #6).
3. Make sure the working yarn is attached to the stitches on the right needle when we resume working mid-row.
Going back to your project with a hole. You probably wonder – now that it did creep into my knitting, how do I fix it?
Well, there is no perfect way to do it.
If you noticed the problem in the next row or round, you can use the method described over here to fix a mistake caused by reason #2, pull the strand through the stitch to fix a mistake caused by reason #3, work the extra stitch caused by reason #4 together with the stitch in front of it, and pick up the dropped stitch (reason #6).
If the mistake happened a few rows or rounds down, fixing it gets more complicated.
The popular advice is to drop the accidental yarn over and redistribute the excess yarn among other stitches in the same row or round. They also say that we can ladder a dropped stitch up, tightening the neighbouring stitches in the process.
Both approaches are good only if your stitch pattern is heavily textured, and you don’t care much about having even tension. Why? Because both these approaches mess up with the tension and, as a result, with the overall look and feel of your project.
In most cases, it is better to unravel a few rows or rounds to the place where the mistake happened, and then re-knit those few rows or rounds, but without a hole this time.
WATCH EVERY STEP IN THE VIDEO TUTORIAL
Now, that we know what to pay attention to, holes don’t stand a chance, right?
Unravelling becomes especially important when we work in a stitch pattern other than garter or stockinette stitch.
Because an unwanted hole does not come alone – it comes with an additional unwanted stitch (reasons #1-5) or with a decrease (reason #6) – the mistake not only results in a hole, it also distorts the stitch pattern. The change in the stitch count offsets the texture, making everything look off.
Given that it is not easy to fix these mistakes, it is best to do everything we can to avoid making them. The tips in this tutorial will help you with that.
SAVE IT FOR LATER:
This and 26 other in-depth tutorials are part of Knitting Collection #9.
