4 Reasons You Need to Learn to Read Your Stitches

Happy New Year to you! It’s been a while since my last post again. Life is busy these days, but I’ve had some time to think, and for this new year, I am excited to be back and am more eager than ever to share my knowledge related to knitting and crochet. First up, 4 Reasons You Need to Learn to Read Your Stitches. Beginner knitter and crocheters generally enjoy testing and expanding their skills. The best way to improve your skills as a knitter or crocheter is to learn how to read your stitches. Now, I’m not going to go into specifics here of what each stitch should look like. After all, factoring in two different crafts, there are countless variations within each realm of what a stitch will look like. Maybe one day… Here, I’ll cover the basics of why you need to learn to read your stitches.

1. Ability to Identify Stitch Orientation

Whether you knit or crochet, if you put your work down and come back to it after a time – do you know what direction you should continue working? It’s crucial to learn what the anatomy of your current working stitch looks like. From both the right side of your fabric, as well as the wrong side. I’m talking about knitted V’s and purl bumps; crocheted posts, front loops and back loops. Find a good tutorial to study the anatomy of your stitches to recognize exactly which point you’re at and meant to be working. After all, there’s nothing worse than picking up your work after some time and realise hours later that you’ve gone in the wrong direction and now have to frog back your work and redo it. Frogging isn’t all bad, and I’ve previously touched on this topic here.

2. Makes Row Counting Easy

Okay, you’ve got the anatomy of your stitches down. But now what do you do with this information? Well, knowing what your stitches look like means that you should be able to read rows. Being able to tell where your stitches start and stop, seeing how high your yarn loops and winds around allows you to be able to efficiently count your rows. Whether spot checking that you’ve clicked your row counter enough times, or you live more dangerously and rely on physically counting, the ability to read your stitches is an integral part of being able to count your rows.

3. Identify Tension Issues

After learning what your stitches are supposed to look like, use this knowledge to periodically check your gauge throughout your work to ensure consistency throughout your crafting. Consistent tension that’s maintained though the entirety of a project will result in a more polished finished piece.

But I did a gauge swatch?! Why does this matter?

Gauge swatching is great for determining what a fabric will look like before you start a full project. However, seeing smaller or bigger stitches sporadically means that more attention should be paid to maintaining your gauge.

4. Know How Long to Leave Floats

Whether knitting or crocheting a stranded colourwork piece, you’ll find yourself navigating floats. It’s a very common thing to accidentally leave a float too short. This is a result of pulling too tightly after working a stitch. If you’ve done this before, you’ll know that short floats are responsible for terrible bunching and puckering of an otherwise beautiful design. When you understand what your stitches should look like, when working with an even tension, you are able to leave longer floats and prevent puckering from happening.

Having a good read on your stitches is by far, the most important skill to learn as a beginner crocheter or knitter. Here are some great resources to help:

Crochet Stitches – It’s all In a Nutshell has an excellent page walking through the basics

Knit Stitches – Norman from Nimble Needles communicates so succinctly and in an approachable way that mastering the anatomy of knit stitches will come easy