How To Unknit Your Stitches To Fix Mistakes ~ Knit For Crocheters Series

Hey everyone, it's Deja from Knit and Crochet Ever After, and today we are going to learn how to unknit some stitches. Okay, so the reason that you may need to unknit some stitches is that you accidentally mess up. So if we look at this work here, this is a 1x1 rib, which means I do 1 knit and 1 purl, 1 knit, 1 purl, over and over, and it makes it into a ribbing, so it gives a little bit of stretch. And if you put your work down, say, and you pick it back up and you start going and you didn't pay attention to what you ended on or you didn't read your stitches, and suddenly you notice after a row or even maybe more that you... messed up the way that you were supposed to be doing it. So we started over here and if you haven't seen my Read Your Stitches video, check that out because that will make a little bit more sense when I'm going. But we'll look here, we see a knit stitch, we see a purl stitch, a knit stitch, a purl stitch, and then a purl stitch. So right here we messed up because we can see some knit stitches down below. So when I put it down I picked it back up not looking at what I did previously or reading Reading my stitches, I just thought I was on purl, and I went and did purl, knit, purl, and I totally messed up my row. I'm totally backwards. So I need to unknit it. If I just pull this out, I'm going to have a real big problem trying to rip my stitches out. I cannot do that like in crochet. Crochet is very easy to fix your mistakes because you can just pull one stitch at a time. Not so with knitting. Depending on the type of yarn you have, it could be impossible to To remove your needle and pull your stitches back successfully. This yarn, it's pretty dense, it's pretty stiff, so I could probably do it, but I still wouldn't. You know, unless I had like a huge amount to go, that'll be later on, very much later on in tutorials on how to kind of pick up a row so that you can rip back to it. That's very, very... Difficult to do depending on your stitch pattern, so that'll be in a later tutorial. But for now, we're hoping that we're catching our mistakes quickly so that we don't have to knit back too far. We also call it tinking because the noise that the needles make when you're knitting, usually like with metal, make like a tink sound. So they call it tinking also. But to actually knit back, it's not quite knitting. It's more like kind of... Carefully ripping while putting your needle in. So there's basically two things that you have to do to do this. One you have to know what your stitch looks like and two you have to know which way to put your loop. Now if you looked at my reading your stitches video you know that the right This side of your loop should be facing you, so when you're looking at your loops, that one that's on the right should be facing you. So you'll see how it looks like a foundation chain, the chain, the right side of the chain should face you. So as long as you know that when you're tinking, you can successfully get your stitches back the right way. Otherwise, you'll just have a twisted stitch that you need to fix, which also I go over in that video. So the first thing we need to do is get this last stitch off. So what I do to make it easier for me is I pull on them because it opens up the stitch that I just worked into. So you can see this big loop here. That's the loop of the very last stitch that I worked into. And I can see the right side and the left side. So I know if I just insert my hook like this, I'm going to be in the right spot. So I've got that last loop on my needle now I need to take this off. So I push it and then that is that loop that I just worked and I'm just going to pull on my tail. So I've unknit one stitch again so I'm going to do it with my tension makes it a little easier because I pull And then there's my next stitch. This is a purl. It doesn't matter. I still have a normal loop. Doesn't matter if it's a knit stitch or a purl stitch. You're still gonna see that loop. It's just the purl bump is to the front instead of the back. So here's my loop. I have the right side, so now I just enter from the front. If I enter from the front, I'm going to pick up that right side on the right side. If I go from the back, I'm going to have a twisted stitch. So go from the front, whether it's a knit or a purl. So I have that loop caught, now I can take this loop off, so I just push and my tail comes right out nice and easy. I just move it to the back to make it a little easier. I readjust my tension. Um often because I like to pull on it like this so that I can see that loop nice and easy otherwise you're if you Try to keep it small. It's a lot harder to see so I pull on it so I can see that loop So again, we're in a knit stitch now. So the purl bump purl bump is back here But it's still the same way the loop is the same way so I enter from the front and then I pull that loop off So we need to go all the way back to where I made that mistake there. So when you're going Depending on the size of your yarn, you can really get going kind of fast because you just go straight through that front so those right loops will be in the front so that when you go to rework it, you're ready to go. You just go and start working. Almost there. I should have put it closer to the edge so I wouldn't have to unknit so many. But you can see it's not that bad. Once you know what you're looking for and what you need to fix, it goes much faster. It doesn't mean it's fun because it's not. I do not like unknitting stuff that I've done, but it's not horrible. So I've made it back to the stitch. So now I can see I'm supposed to be doing a knit stitch and not a purl stitch. So now I can continue With my project. So that is how you're going to unknit stitches. If you have any questions, leave them below and thank you for watching!