Reading Your Knitting 3: Recognize Increases and Decreases

Identify where your last increase or decrease occurred to keep pattern repeats on track.

Row counters are the worst, aren’t they?

Who wants to interrupt their work at the end of a row to turn a counter? Never mind that you’re likely already splitting your attention between your knitting and an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer—and who’s going to remember to flip a counter when you get to the end of the round if you’re holding your breath to see if Buffy and the gang beat the latest Big Bad?

The unfortunate side effect of this is that you can get to the repeat round of your pattern, look at your work, and wonder if you’ve really knit three rounds or four rounds since your last increase.

If this sounds familiar, never fear! Once you know how to read your knitting, you don't need a row counter.

Keep reading (or watch the video tutorial) to acquire this superpower for yourself.

(Ha ha—get it? ’Cause knitting needles have points? Okay, never mind.)

Most patterns that use increases, decreases, and cables will have you repeat a certain block of rows to achieve the shaping they desire.

For instance, pattern shaping for a thumb gusset knit in the round may look like this:

Round 1: M1L, knit to marker, M1R, knit to end.

Rounds 2 to 3: Knit.

Repeat Rounds 1 to 3 four times.

If you can’t recognize the increase stitches you made in round 1 (the Make Ones), how are you going to know when it’s time to make them again?

A Bar Increase is easy to recognize because of the little bar that wraps around the base of your increased stitch, with a small hole beneath it.

The most common bar increase is the Left-Leaning Bar Increase (or Non-Dominant–Leaning Bar Increase), also called the KFB or K1FB. The mirror of that is the Right-Leaning Bar Increase (or Dominant-Leaning Bar Increase). Both of them create a new stitch that sits on a horizontal bar wrapped around the base.

In my swatch above, I was knitting flat and increasing every four rows. So my knitted instructions would have looked like this (assuming that the increase happens on the first row—which it doesn't in my swatch, but let’s pretend it did):

Row 1: Knit 1, kfb, k to end.

Row 2: Purl.

Row 3: Knit

Row 4: Purl.

Repeat Rows 1 to 4.

Whether your increase falls on Row 1 or another row, for the purposes of counting rows between increases, all you need to know is the number of plain rows between increase rows. In this case, I have my increase row, then three plain rows, for a total pattern repeat of four rows.

When I’m counting my rows to see if I’m ready to increase again, I start with my last increased stitch as Row 1, and count the stacked Vees up to the needle,* remembering to include the stitch on the needle.

*I count these by inserting the tip of a needle into the centre of each V (i.e. stitch) as I count.

In the image below, I have worked the full four-row pattern repeat (as you can see on the left needle), and have just begun to work Row 1 again, completing one more kfb increase stitch.

You would use a similar method to count between increases made with yarn overs (YOs), except there would be no bar wrapping around the increased stitch, just a little hole under it.

The Make One increase (also known as the Running Thread increase) picks up the bar between two stitches and knits into it in such a way that the bar twists, drawing the two neighbouring columns of stitches together and preventing the little hole that is common with so many increases.

You can make one that leans toward the dominant hand (M1R or M1D) or the non-dominant hand (M1L or M1N). If a pattern doesn’t specify, use M1L / M1N. (M1D—Make One Dominant-Leaning—and M1N—Make One Non-Dominant-Leaning are terms I invented to be more inclusive of left-handed mirror knitters. Learn more about this terminology in this post.)

M1L (or M1N): Pick up bar and place on non-working needle with leading leg in front. Knit into back loop.

M1R (or M1D): Pick up bar and place on non-working needle with trailing leg in front. Knit into front loop.

The bars will twist in opposite directions for these two increases, making your stitch seem to sprout from the bar on top of the twist (which is where the lean comes in). To recognize which round you created the increase on, look for the twisted bar. The stitch coming out of it is your increase stitch.

This is the opposite end of the same swatch I used above, so I was still increasing every four rows. The instructions for this would look like this:

Row 1: Knit to last stitch, M1, k1.

Row 2: Purl.

Row 3:  Knit.

Row 4: Purl.

Repeat Rows 1-4.

Count your repeats the same as for the Bar Increase, except be sure not to count the twisted bar as your increase stitch—the stitch coming out of the twisted bar “stitch” is your increase row.

Most decreases have the same end result—take two or more stitches and decrease them to only one, meaning you have two or more overlapped stitches with one stitch coming out of it.

Since you are, in essence, absorbing one or more column of stitches into another, leaving only one column intact, the designer's choice of decrease is important to the final look you want to achieve.

To decrease one stitch and keep the right column intact, use Slip Slip Knit (SSK).

SSK: Slip two stitches in a row knitwise, then insert non-working needle back through and knit these two stitches together as one.

To decrease one stitch and keep the trailing column intact, use Knit 2 Together (K2tog).

K2tog: Knit next two stitches together as one.

To decrease two stitches symmetrically, use either a Central Chain Decrease (CCD), which keeps the centre stitch on top, or a Double Centre Decrease (DCD), which keeps the centre stitch in the back.

CCD: Slip two stitches together knitwise, knit one, and pass two slipped stitches back over worked stitch OR slip two together knitwise, slip one knitwise, insert non-working needle back through three slipped stitches and knit together as one.

DCD: Slip one knitwise, k2tog, pass slipped stitch back over.

This image shows a SSK decrease. However, you can see how the lapped stitches are in the row below the decrease row, which has only one stitch coming out of it. This is true regardless of what kind of decrease you have done. Your stitches will only overlap with a different stitch on top with each kind of decrease.

So, now you’re well on your way to ditching the row counter completely! You can recognize your increases and decreases, and with a little practice, you'll be able to count rows between them with ease.

In my next tutorial, I’ll explain how to do the same between crossing rows on cables.

Happy knitting!