When I first got my knitting machines I wanted so much to produce the type of products that I saw others making all over the web. I had to remember that errors when learning a new skill of any kind will result, simply because that skill is new to me. I had to remind myself that I didn’t learn to walk, tie my shoes or drive a car the first time I did them. There’s this misconception in the circular knitting world that I found myself in that you can just buy the machine and in under a half hour you will have a perfect hat/scarf, etc. It took perseverance and repetition to become good at it and eventually master those skills. Well lets get serious, I’m no master knitter 😒.
All joking aside, dropped stitches and tucked stitches are two of the biggest problems I had when I started to knit both by hand and on the machine. I learned there are different ways to fix those errors and one of the easiest was to curse at it and then tear it apart and start over. That was not fun nor practical. My machine for some reason didn’t seem to care that I was angry and frustrated. Short of throwing it out the window I felt at a loss. Sometimes I wouldn’t even notice an error until I was half way or completely though with the project. This still happens after knitting countless hats, scarves, etc. So, finally tired of tearing things apart or trying my best to stitch them back together and having an end project that looked like a cat decided to use it as a scratching pad; I learned to fix my problems or at very least hide them.
Dropped stitches are by far the biggest problem most new machine knitters have. Usually it is caused by one of a couple of things: Improper cast on or using the wrong yarn tension (either too tight or too loose).
I want to show you how I learned to fix those errors easily and painlessly. Below are the sites I found that helped me and I hope they help you as well.
Dropped stitches:
This video is from Yay for Yarn. She does a wonderful job of showing us how to fix dropped stitches.
Tucked Stitches
Another problem we find is the “tucked” stitch. This happens when two stitches, unintentionally are knit together. And again I will turn to Yay for Yarn for answers. below she will show you how to fix tucked stitches on a circular knitting machine.
Another person that does a good job of showing us how to fix some circular knitting machine errors is Whitney Betz. She shows us how to fix both dropped stitches and tucked stitches in this video.
Fixing errors when work is off the machine
When I finally finished my first hat I had numerous mistakes. One that continued to plague me long after figuring out how to fix a caught error on the machine was finding a dropped stitch or hole in my work or other problem once the knitting was off the machine. My first question was now what? Continue to shrug and cross my fingers and hope for the best 🤷♀️ 🤞? Instead I did some online research and found this extremely helpful video by a Roxanne Richardson.
Yarn Tension
Another problem is yarn tension. When I started out I heard often during my search to find answers that all knitting machines, seem to prefer certain yarns and hate other yarns. I have learned for the most part it’s not the machine causing the error but it’s the user unknowingly causing the error. Different yarns require different yarn tension. I found when I adjusted my tension the majority of my problems disappeared. You will probably notice that for problems I tend to go to Yay for Yarn for answers. 😊 Following is a great video that might help you as much as it helped me.
I hope that this article and these videos helped you fix your problems using a circular knitting machine. Thank you for taking the time to check out my blog and I look forward to your comments and suggestions as always, cozyneedlecrafts.com.