Zen Knitting

You are adding extra stitches to your rows. Rip it all out and start over. After you do maybe 5 rows, count the stitches. If you have the same amount you started with, you are doing fine. If not, you will need to rip out rows again until you get to the row that has the right # of stitches. You will need to count your stitches frequently so this doesn’t keep happening.

As has been said, you are inadvertantly increasing as you go. While counting will help you to find these errors sooner, it doesn’t tell you how to prevent them. First, when you turn the work (put the filled needle back into your left hand) bring the yarn back to the working position under the left needle tip. The biggest problem novice knitters have is that they go over the needle and lift the last stitch from the row below over the needle and knit into both sides of it, since it looks like two stitches. Second, if you are knitting and purling in the same row, bring the yarn to the front and to the back between the needle tips, not over one. Again this creates and extra stitch by making a yarn over that going between the tips will not. A telltale sign of this is if you have holes in the work, which is what a yarn over creates. Third, make sure you are going through the middle of your stitches, and not splitting the yarn by only picking up some of the plies. Again, split stitches may be knit in each part of the yarn, increasing the number of stitches on the needle. The only way to find this is to look carefully at the fabric for columns of stitches that don’t reach all the way to the cast on row. For this one you need to rip back to the problem and fix it by picking up the whole strand of yarn.

When you get to the end of the row and you turn the material knit in the first stitch on the left hand needle. Since you are having problems count the stitches you have on the needle to see if you have the amount you cast on. If not, do not take the stitches off the needle but look at all of the stitches and see that you only picked up one stitch on the stitches. If your ok there count backward from the left to the right and see if the additional stitch is on the first stitch you made on that row. E-mail me and let me know what has happened with your checking these suggestions out and I will see what the problem is and what can be done to make the correction.