Fix Knitting Mistakes

You are an inch from finishing the sleeve when you see it: a loose loop and a ladder of bare strands running down through eight rows of perfectly good knitting. Or your stitch count is suddenly off by one. Or the sweater you have been knitting for a month is clearly coming out two sizes too big. Every knitter knows the sick little drop in the stomach, and the question that follows: do I have to start over? Fix Knitting Mistakes is the book pattern books skip. It does not teach you to cast on or purl. It teaches you to read the fabric already on your needles, name what went wrong, choose the least drastic repair that will actually hold, and carry it out with your own hands. Unlike stitch dictionaries and pattern collections, this is a repair manual built around the questions knitters really ask on help forums: how do I fix a dropped stitch, how do I ladder down without making it worse, are my stitches twisted, why does my gauge never match, how do I fix an accidental increase, and can I rescue a project that is already blocked and dried. Inside, you'll learn: How to read your knitting so you can diagnose a mistake from the fabric itself instead of posting a photo and hoping The six-rung Repair Ladder for deciding, in under a minute, whether to leave a mistake, fix it in place, ladder down, tink back, rip to a lifeline or frog How to secure and pick up a dropped stitch on knit, purl and garter fabric, and how to find where it ran from How to ladder down to a mistake many rows below and rebuild the column so it disappears How to tink, rip back and reload your needle without twisting a single stitch, and how to install a lifeline after the fact How to tell whether your stitches are twisted, why it happens and when it is fine to leave them Why your swatch lies, what to do when your gauge will not match, and the simple size-swap math that rescues a sweater already on the needles How to even out messy edges, rowing out and ladders in the round, deal with dye-lot stripes and knots, and repair holes, snags and tight bind-offs on finished pieces Written in a calm, friendly voice with step-by-step instructions you can follow with the work in your hands, this book turns the fear that keeps so many people from knitting into a skill you own. Frogging will always be an option. After this book, it will rarely be the one you need.

Imad Muratspahic is an independent author of practical how-to guides, technical handbooks, history and fiction. The books aim to be clear, honest and useful from the first page.