How to Pick Up Stitches for Knitting

Last month I told you a bit about the continuing saga of me knitting an argyle vest, which has given me lots of opportunities for writing tutorials about different skills that were used in making it.

That particular post was about duplicate stitch, which is essential for making the diagonal lines that are what makes it look like argyle.

It also gave me a chance to write about picking up stitches, because it had just about every scenario in which you might need to pick up stitches in one place.

But before that, have you checked out the post on Circular Knitting Machine FAQs?

The vest has a deep scoop neck, so there were places to pick up stitches that were straight horizontal (bound off edge at the bottom of the neckline), straight vertical along the sides and along a curve/diagonal in between.

I go into a lot more detail in the post about how to actually go about picking up all these stitches in different locations, but there are a couple of main things you should know if you need to pick up a lot of stitches for a project.

First: if you’re picking up a lot of stitches, add some locking stitch markers, at least to divide the area in half if not in quarters or more. This will help you make sure you’re picking up the right number of stitches in each section, so if you’re wildly off you can just rip out a little bit and try again.

Second: stitch counts in patterns are not magic. It’s not the end of the world if you’re off by a few in either direction, so long as you have the stitch multiple needed to complete the edging. You can always increase or decrease a couple of stitches in the first round if you need to. No one is going to count, and as long as the edge lies flat (or looks the way it’s supposed to) when you’re done it’s totally fine.

Check out all the tips for picking up stitches at Our Daily Craft.

For the past few years I’ve taken part in a Christmas in July blog hop that encourages people to get a jump on their making for holiday gifts.

I love to use yarn I already have for these projects in the hope that people will consider what they already have that they can use to make projects for themselves or to give as gifts.

This year it was a couple of knit baskets made using partial balls of yarn left in my stash from other projects.

They use the same basic pattern but the first one is made with two colors of bulky yarn, and the second used two strands of worsted weight yarn held together, which made the gauge about the same, but I cast on fewer stitches to make a smaller version.

The bottom of the basket is square, though you can make them rectangular if you’d rather. Then I just knit up the sides in rounds until I was about to run out of yarn. This gave both baskets rather short sides — maybe more like a tray than a basket — but you can keep knitting as long as you like to make the sides of your basket as tall as you want.

They’re worked in seed stitch, which keeps the edges from curling and adds a nice texture to the baskets.

Of course this also allows you to use even more odd balls from your stash. I’d love to make a big one someday combining lots of different yarn. I mean, I’d probably use it to store more yarn, but that’s a fine thing to do.

As it is, these little trays are great for sitting on your desk or bedside table to hold little things that always seem to appear there. I like to use one to hold the supplies for whatever project I’m working on, things like little scissors, my tape measure, a crochet hook, etc.

And they would make good gifts on their own or as a container to hold some other goodies if you like.

You can find the free pattern for these stash busting baskets over at Our Daily Craft.

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