Picking Up Dropped Stitches

Every knitter drops stitches. It’s going to happen. But the first time it happens, it feels overwhelming and terrible. Mainly because you probably don’t know what to do. Visions of stitches running to the end of your fabric, ruined projects and other apocalyptic outcomes, fill your head quickly. So let’s fix that, right? The sooner you get comfortable with a dropped stitch or two, the less you’ll panic when it happens. The trick, for me, to became comfortable with dropped stitches? I learned how to fix the problem without frogging miles of knit fabric.

We’ll review the simple stitches here, but just know that as you get better and more comfortable with fixing dropped knit or purl stitches in stockinette stitch, or garter stitch, you’ll be able to advance to cables, lace, colorwork, and beyond.

There are so many techniques we could talk about, but I’m going to stick to my favorite one. I use my working knitting needles, or grab a couple of spare needles, to work my way back up the ladder of a dropped stitch. A lot of people use crochet hooks, and those are great — they’re just not my preference.

Knit stitches

Step 1: As soon as you see the dropped stitch, insert either needle into it to secure it. Once it’s on the needle, you can assess whether you’ve twisted it and fix it if you need to. How can you tell if it’s twisted? The right leg of the stitch should be on the front of your needle.

Step 2: Start working your way up the ladder. Those bars of yarn that cause the gap between stitches — you know, that general looseness that caused you to notice the dropped stitch to begin with — those are the bars. The bars should be behind the stitch you secured on your needle.

Step 3: Make sure the stitch is on your left-hand needle. Using your right-hand needle, lift the bar from front to back onto the tip of your left needle so that it sits behind the stitch. Insert your right needle into the stitch right to left, and pass it over the bar and off the needle. You just knit one stitch.

Step 4: Repeat this process all the way up the ladder until you’ve picked up every bar and worked it into a stitch.

I’ve posted a short tutorial to YouTube if you’d like a visual!

Purl stitches

There are two ways to fix dropped purl stitches in stockinette. The first is to turn your fabric around and follow the knit stitch instructions above. 😉

The second way is just as simple.

Step 1: Secure the stitch and assess whether it’s straight or twisted. If it’s twisted, fix it. If not, ensure the bars of yarn are in front of the stitch.

Step 2: Make sure the stitch is on your right-hand needle. Using your left needle, lift the bar onto the tip of your right needle so that it sits in front of the stitch. Insert your needle into the stitch from left to right, pass the stitch over the bar, and off the needle. You just purled one stitch.

Step 3: Repeat this process all the way up the ladder until you’ve picked up every bar and worked it into a stitch.

I’ve posted a short tutorial to Youtube if you’d like a visual!

Garter stitch fabric

To repair garter stitch, you will use both the knit and purl stitch techniques I’ve detailed above. The difference is that you’ll go back and forth between the two, depending on which row you’re on. Looking at the fabric, if you’re on a knit row, you’ll use the knit stitch recovery technique. If you’re on a purl row, you’ll use the purl stitch recovery technique. The trick here is determining which row you’re on.

To figure out where you are in garter stitch fabric, look at the bars of yarn between stitches. You’ll notice that on knit rows, the bars come out of the back of the fabric, while on purl rows the bars come out of the front of the fabric. This is because of how the stitches are actually worked. For knit stitches, you hold the yarn in the back, and for purl stitches, you hold your yarn in the front.

It will take a bit of practice studying the fabric to be able to see front and back easily and quickly. But once you see it, you’ll be able to move quickly through the process.

Did I miss something you’d like me to review in another post? Drop a comment below and I’ll do my best to address it!