Keeping track when you get back

     In my last post I provided some tips to help you reduce your thinking while knitting, and thus be able to relax and enjoy the craft. In this post I hope to provide some more useful tips towards that end. One challenge a lot of my students have is forgetting where they left off on a knitting project when they set it down and come back to it later.  The best thing you can do is to get to the end of a row or round and make sure you have properly noted where in the pattern you stopped. Most of the time this can be done with either a sticky note on your pattern itself, or by using your row counter when you are working a pattern that has repeating rows. 
     Unfortunately you can’t always make it to the end of the row, and sometimes you get interrupted in the middle of what you are doing, and then need to reorient yourself to your pattern.  This can be challenging for newer knitters, who may not be familiar with what knit and purl or other stitches look like after they have been worked.  If that is the case, look back to the beginning of your row or round, and start counting the stitches along with the pattern. For example, if I am working in 2x2 ribbing, and I started my row by knitting 2 stitches, then purling 2 stitches.  If I am on stitch 36, then I know it is a knit stitch. I can start at the beginning of my row and count, knit 2, purl 2, etc. up to where I am.
     With lace patterns this could become much trickier as the yarn-overs (yo) are increasing the total stitches and knit-2-togethers (k2tog) are decreasing. If you are in the middle of a row, the easiest thing is to start at the beginning of the row and review each worked stitch to see what it was. If the pattern is something like: *K1, K2tog, yo, k1*, then I need to count my stitches in groups of 4. Knowing what a yo looks like and what a k2tog look like will help. A yo doesn’t have anything connected to it on the previous row. Be careful because sometimes these stitches will get cozy with a stitch next to it and hide. K2tog’s have two stitches hanging off them on the row below. The best way to learn what any stitch looks like after it has been worked is to work that stitch, and look at what has formed on the right hand needle.