Herringbone Stitch Pattern From Down Home

There are several different ways to make a herringbone pattern. Occasionally I get pattern support queries about the one used in my Down Home pattern so I’ve created this tutorial to help people out.

By far the most common issue people have when swatching is that they are getting a lacy pattern instead of a herringbone pattern. Before I begin I want to address how to fix that. If this is happening to you the problem is with the number of stitches you have on your needles. The pattern is worked over a multiple of 3 plus 1. If you cast on a multiple of 3 the yarn overs will stack on top of each other and open up into something that does not at all resemble herringbone. Casting on an extra stitch should clear it right up.

Now that that’s out of the way, here is how to create the herringbone pattern from Down Home:

Knit the first stitch. [Note: We are just swatching here. The actual pattern has a selvage stitch in stockinette at either side of the row. If you are trying this on the actual sweater and not a swatch knit the first two stitches, one for the selvage and one to begin the pattern.]

Next, make a Yarn Over by bringing the working yarn from the back to the front and around the right hand needle.

Next, with the yarn held in back slip the next stitch on the left hand needle as if to purl.

Now knit the next two stitches on the left hand needle.

Insert the tip of the left hand needle into the front of the slipped stitch. Then pass the slipped stitch over the two knitted stitches. Your work will now look like this:

Repeat these steps from the yarn over until you have reached the end of the row. Do not repeat the initial knit stitch from the beginning of the row.

The right side should look like this. Now flip your work over so that the wrong side is facing you.

Purl the first stitch. [Or the first two stitches to account for the selvage if you are working on the sweater instead of a swatch.]

Make a yarn over by taking the working yarn over the top of the right hand needle and bringing it around back towards the front of your work.

With the working yarn in being held in front, slip the next stitch as if to purl.

Purl the next two stitches on the left hand needle.

Insert the tip of the left hand needle into the back of the slipped stitch. Pull it over the two purled stitches and drop it off of the needle.

Your work should now look like this. Repeat these steps from the yarn over until you have finished the row.

Once you’ve finished the wrong side should look like this. That’s it! Flip the swatch back over the the right side and repeat the instructions above.

Stabilizing a Knit Neckline

This was a Greek tragedy. Not only is this dress one of my favorite garments that I’ve ever made for myself, but it’s a tunic knit in sock yarn. It took FOREVER to knit. Well, not really forever but six weeks of nightly knitting is pretty close to in my book. I wore it so much that the neckline got stretched out beyond the point of use. But don’t worry, I fixed it. See?

I planned to try three things to try to fix the neckline in the order of the amount of effort they required (and also in the reverse order from what I thought was likelihood of success). They were:

1. Wash it, turn it inside out, and throw it in the drier.

2. Crochet a slip-stitch chain around the neckline.

3. Unpick the neckline and reknit the whole thing.

I wouldn’t normally suggest using the drier but this dress was knit with superwash yarn when I had a young baby with a tendency to puke everywhere. When it came to clothing if I couldn’t use a machine to wash and dry it I didn’t own it.

Superwash wool grows when it gets wet and doesn’t come back unless you pop it in the drier for a bit (which, yes, is risky). As I had completely dried the swatch in a machine before beginning the project and had dried the dress multiple times before as well, I was confident that doing it here would not ruin this particular dress in this particular yarn.

The dress came out of the drier fine, but the neckline was still stretched out so I moved onto the next thing on my list: a crochet chain.

The slip-stitch chain worked perfectly. If you have a neckline that’s stretched out and needs to be stabilized give it a try. It’s so easy and is certainly less involved than unpicking from a cast on and reknitting the whole thing.

How to use a crochet slip stitch to stabilize a knit neckline:

You will need a small crochet hook a few sizes smaller than the knitting needle equivalent that you used to knit whatever it is you’re fixing and a small amount of yarn.

Note: I worked this from the Right Side because I like the look of the chain. If you don’t want to see the chain work this as follows from the Wrong Side.

First, put the crochet hook underneath both legs of the first stitch on the neckline and pull through a loop.

Then put the hook under both legs of the next stitch and pull through a second loop.

Pull the second stitch through the first stitch. You now have one stitch on your hook. Repeat the last two steps until you have finished the neckline.

I would advise not weaving in any ends until you’ve tried it on and made sure the neckline works. That way if it’s too tight it will be easier to rip out and redo. Remember that you’re working with a smaller hook try to keep your crochet loops loose while working the chain.

Changing the length of a sleeve

Let’s talk sleeves.

I recently conducted a survey about alterations that knitters regularly make to a knitting pattern for a better fit.  One of the most frequent answers was either shortening or lengthening the sleeves. 

If this is an alteration you need to make but you’re not quite sure how to go about it read on and fear not.  Recalculating the increase or decrease rate for a sleeve is relatively easy and straight forward.

[Note: For the purposes of this explanation we are assuming that the sleeve is knit top down.  It works exactly the same way for a sleeve knit from the cuff up, just substitute the word increase for everywhere it says decrease.]

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The tapered sleeve on Knife Grinder’s Daughter.

First count up the total number of sets of decreases in the sleeve.  If the pattern doesn’t make this immediately evident or you are also adjusting the stitch count somewhere along the line you can do this by subtracting the number of stitches at the wrist from the number of stitches in the upper arm and divide by two.

Second determine how long you want the sleeve to be.  Subtract the length of the cuff from this number. 

Then determine how many rows you will have in the sleeve by multiplying the desired length (minus cuff) by the row gauge. 

To get a rough idea of how often you should work a decrease row divide the total number of rows by the number of decrease rows.

To Summarize:

(Number of stitches at upper arm – number of stitches at the wrist) / 2 = total number of decrease rows

(Desired Length of sleeve – length of cuff) x row gauge per inch or cm = total number rows in sleeve

Total number of rows in sleeve / total number of decrease rows = how often to work a decrease row

Unless you get lucky, the final number probably isn’t going to be a whole number.  Round this number down and work any remaining rounds after the last set of decreases but before the cuff.

You can use this method even if you are also adapting the pattern to fit your arms in some way.  For example, if you have bigger biceps and don’t want to begin tapering the sleeve until the point where your arm actually begins decreasing, you can use this easily.  Simply measure your arm from the point where you want to begin decreasing to your wrist.  Use this number in place of the desired sleeve length when determining the total number of rows available for decreasing. 

Enter the Troublemaker

I don’t know about you, but I have loads of leftover sock yarn. It’s enough to fill a couple boxes and seems to just multiply. [How does that happen??]

I’m always looking for ways to use it up. The Badlands Mitts were my first attempt to at getting rid of leftovers. Here’s the latest: I’d like to introduce the Troublemaker.

It combines two things that make using up small amounts of leftovers a breeze—stripes and small bodies.

The Troublemaker Cardigan is a great pattern for using up leftover sock yarn.

It’s sized from Newborn through age 10 and you can find out the specifics of the pattern including yardage requirements and techniques used here.

As always I love seeing everyone’s projects. If you share photos of your Troublemaker Cardigan on Instagram please tag me and use the hashtag #kathrynfolkerthdesigns and/or #troublemakercardigan so that I can see it. You could also let me know about it by linking your project to the pattern page on Ravelry.

Shoulder Seam Stability

What seams like forever ago I asked a question on my Instagram feed about shoulder seams. Unsurprisingly, people seemed to have a strong preference. Also unsurprisingly, their preferences were all over the map. But it did raise the question: is one method of shaping and joining shoulder seams inherently better than the other? Does one provide more stability? Is there a reason to favor one over the other aside from personal preference?

If you’re new to sweater construction let me explain (if you’re not, feel free to skip the next two paragraphs). Your shoulders are not flat. Depending on the type and fit of sweater you’re knitting, if you want it to fit properly you need to create a slope in the shoulder area.

In bottom-up sweaters, there are two main methods for shaping shoulders and joining them together. Traditionally you would bind off a few stitches on successive rows creating a shoulder edge that looks like a staircase. The staircase from the front shoulder and the staircase of the back shoulder are then seamed together. The other method involves creating the slope of the shoulder through a set of short-rows and then joining the live stitches from the front and back shoulders through the 3-needle bind off.

Enter my experiment. All things being equal, I wanted to see how each type of shoulder join would handle abuse and hold up over time. I dug through my stash for the heaviest yarn I could find and knit four identical shoulder pieces with it. Two were shaped with stair-step decreases and seamed together. The other two were shaped with short rows and and joined via the 3-needle bind off.

If these don’t look identical to you, it’s because the 3-needle bind off over live stitches takes up more room vertically than does seaming together bound off stitches. I measured and weighed the swatches and then sent about testing them, making sure to always compare the growth of the swatch and seam to its original measurements.

First I hung them dry over a clothes line with 1 kg of weight suspended from the swatch (half from the front and half from the back) to simulate the weight of a larger bulky sweater pulling on that seam as its worn. After two days I took them down, measured, and wet blocked them again. At this point there was no difference in percentage growth between the swatches.

Then I really tried to abuse them. I wet blocked them again and hung them weighted over the clothes line before they were dry. I took them down, measured them again, and then wet blocked them. Again, there was no difference in growth between the two. More importantly, there was no difference between the two in terms of growth at the seams.

What I conclude from this is that the two methods will hold up similarly over time and abuse so go ahead and use your preferred method guilt free.