Knitting 105: Everything You Need to Know to Level Up Your Skills in 2012 and Beyond

If you have already learned the basics of casting on, knit stitch, purl stitch, and binding off, you are standing at one of the most exciting thresholds in any knitter’s life. You know enough to make a scarf, maybe a dishcloth, perhaps even a simple hat. But somewhere in the back of your mind, you sense that there is a whole world of technique waiting for you just past the horizon. That is exactly what this guide is for.

Knitting 105 is where things get genuinely interesting. This is the level where you stop following patterns word for word without understanding why, and start building the kind of deep fluency that lets you read your knitting, fix your mistakes, and eventually design your own projects. Whether you are picking this up fresh in 2012 or using it as a refresher after years away from your needles, every section here is written to give you real, practical knowledge that sticks.

Let’s dive in.

Understanding Gauge, Really Understanding It

If there is one concept that separates beginning knitters from confident ones, it is gauge. Most beginners hear about gauge, dutifully knit a swatch, measure it in a distracted way, and then ignore it entirely. The result is a sweater that fits a large toddler or a hat that could double as a tarpaulin.

Gauge is simply a measurement of how many stitches and how many rows fit into a defined area, usually four inches by four inches. Your gauge is determined by three factors: the yarn weight, the needle size, and the particular way your hands hold and tension the yarn. That last factor is the one that trips people up. Two knitters working with identical yarn and identical needles can produce fabric of very different densities because knitting tension is an individual thing, as personal as handwriting.

To measure gauge properly, cast on at least six to eight more stitches than the pattern recommends for a four-inch swatch. Work in the stitch pattern specified, which is often stockinette but could be ribbing or something else. Knit until the swatch is at least six inches long. Then, critically, wash and block your swatch exactly the way you intend to treat the finished object. Most yarns, especially those with any wool or natural fiber content, change noticeably after washing. Blocking can open up lace dramatically and smooth out textured stitches. Measuring before washing is measuring a lie.

Once your swatch is dry and flat, lay it on a table and place two pins exactly four inches apart horizontally. Count every stitch between those pins, including half stitches at the edges. Do the same vertically to count your row gauge. Compare to the pattern. If you have more stitches per inch than specified, your knitting is tighter than the designer’s; go up a needle size. If you have fewer, your knitting is looser; go down a needle size. Repeat the swatch process until you match. It feels tedious, but it is the single most reliable way to make sure your finished object comes out the right size.

Short Rows and How to Use Them

Short rows are one of those techniques that sound intimidating on paper but feel completely logical once you try them. A short row is simply a row that you do not knit all the way to the end. Instead, you turn the work partway through and head back in the other direction. This builds extra fabric in one area, which is exactly what you need for things like sock heels, curved shawl edges, bust darts in sweaters, and shoulder shaping.

The challenge with short rows is that turning partway through a row leaves a small hole or a visible gap at the turning point. Over the years, knitters have developed several methods for hiding this gap. The two you will encounter most often in 2012-era patterns are the wrap-and-turn method and the German short row method.

In the wrap-and-turn method, when you reach your turning point, you slip the next stitch to the right needle, bring the yarn to the front (or back, depending on whether the next stitch would be a knit or a purl), then slip that stitch back to the left needle. You have now wrapped the stitch. Turn the work and proceed. When you eventually knit back over the wrapped stitch, you pick up the wrap and knit it together with the stitch to close the hole.

The German short row method, sometimes called the double stitch method, is slightly different. After turning, you slip the first stitch purlwise with the yarn in front, then pull the working yarn firmly up and over to the back. This creates what looks like a double stitch, with two legs sitting on the needle. When you return to work that double stitch later, you simply knit or purl both legs together. Many knitters find German short rows neater and easier to execute than wrap-and-turn once they try them.

Practice both methods on swatches before you need them in a real project. Seeing how each one behaves in your specific yarn will prepare you far better than any written description can.

Increases and Decreases Beyond the Basics

You probably already know the knit two together decrease, abbreviated K2tog, and you may know yarn over as a way to add stitches in lace. But there is a whole vocabulary of shaping techniques worth adding to your repertoire.

The slip, slip, knit decrease, abbreviated SSK, is K2tog’s left-leaning mirror image. You slip two stitches knitwise, one at a time, to the right needle, then insert the left needle through the front of both slipped stitches and knit them together. This creates a decrease that slants to the left, and when paired symmetrically with K2tog, it gives shaping a clean, intentional look, such as in raglan sleeves or the two edges of a centered double decrease.

The make one increase comes in two flavors: make one left, abbreviated M1L, and make one right, abbreviated M1R. Both involve picking up the bar of yarn that runs between two stitches and knitting into it, but the direction you insert your needle changes which way the new stitch leans. Picking up the bar from the front and knitting through the back creates a left-leaning stitch. Picking up the bar from the back and knitting through the front creates a right-leaning stitch. Using them in pairs produces a tidy, nearly invisible increase.

The knit front and back increase, abbreviated Kfb, is probably already in your toolkit. It is simple but leaves a small bar or bump on the fabric, which makes it less ideal for visible shaping but perfectly fine for seams or areas that will be hidden.

Learning to use these increases and decreases deliberately, rather than just picking whichever one shows up first in a pattern, gives you real control over the visual texture and shape of your work.

Reading Your Knitting

One of the most transformative skills you can develop is the ability to read your knitting as you go. This means looking at the fabric on your needles and being able to tell what is happening, whether a stitch is mounted correctly, whether you have accidentally added or dropped a stitch, and where you are in a pattern even if you have lost your place.

Every stitch on the needle has a right leg and a left leg. For a standard Western-style knit stitch, the right leg sits in front of the needle. If you see a stitch with its left leg in front, it is mounted incorrectly, which is called a twisted stitch. Knitting into a twisted stitch will not unravel your work, but it will create a tighter, slightly rotated stitch in your fabric. Sometimes this is intentional (twisted stitches create a textured look and appear in many Eastern European traditional patterns), but usually it is a sign you need to correct the stitch’s orientation before you work it.

Looking at the stitches below the needle is equally important. In stockinette, knit stitches look like little V shapes and purl stitches look like bumps or horizontal bars. If you are working a rib pattern and you can see a knit V stitch coming up on the left needle, you should be knitting it; if you see a purl bump, you should be purling it. With practice, you simply will not need to count stitches in a 2×2 rib because your eyes will automatically recognize the pattern.

This same principle applies to cable patterns, lace, and colorwork. Learning to see what the fabric is telling you means you spend less time counting, less time hunting for your place, and more time actually knitting.

Picking Up Stitches

Picking up stitches along a selvedge or bound-off edge is a skill used constantly in projects like sweater button bands, sock gussets, and adding sleeves. The process sounds simple, and it is, but getting the proportions right takes some experience.

Along a bound-off or cast-on edge, you pick up one stitch for every existing stitch, which is straightforward. Along a row-end selvedge, meaning the side edge of your knitting, it is a different story. Because rows are taller than they are wide, picking up one stitch per row would leave you with too many stitches and a ruffled or puckered edge. The general guideline for stockinette fabric is to pick up approximately three stitches for every four rows, though this varies depending on your gauge and the specific pattern you are following.

To pick up a stitch, insert the right needle through the fabric from front to back, wrap the yarn around the needle as you would for a knit stitch, and draw the loop through to the front. If you are picking up along a selvedge, aim to go through the space just inside the edge stitch rather than through the very edge, which gives a neater appearance.

When picking up stitches around a curved neckline or armhole, work in sections, distributing your pickups evenly across the marked sections. The pattern will usually specify total stitch counts and give guidance on where to pick up more or less densely. When in doubt, a small test swatch along your actual selvedge will tell you whether your pickup rate looks clean and lies flat.

Blocking as Technique, Not Just Finishing

Many knitters think of blocking as something you do at the end of a project, a final tidying up before you call something finished. But blocking is also an active technique that can dramatically change the character of your knitting.

Wet blocking involves fully saturating the finished piece in water, gently squeezing out the excess without wringing, and then laying it flat or pinning it to shape as it dries. This method works beautifully for natural fibers like wool, cotton, and linen. It opens up lace stitches, evens out tension inconsistencies, and softens the fabric.

Steam blocking involves holding a steam iron just above the surface of the piece and letting the steam relax the fibers. You can also use a damp cloth between the iron and the fabric. This method is faster but requires more care to avoid flattening the texture of ribbing or cables, which you typically want to preserve.

Spray blocking is a gentler version of wet blocking where you simply mist the piece with water and then pin or shape it. This is often sufficient for lighter projects or yarns that respond well to minimal moisture.

Understanding which method suits which yarn and stitch pattern is part of becoming a well-rounded knitter. A heavily cabled Aran-weight sweater in wool will respond very differently to blocking than a lace shawl in a linen-silk blend.

Joining New Yarn and Managing Ends

Joining new yarn in the middle of a project and weaving in the resulting ends neatly is one of those skills that separates finished objects that look handmade from those that look handcrafted. There is a real difference.

The simplest join is to leave a tail of the old yarn and begin knitting with the new yarn at the start of a row, holding both tails briefly until the new yarn is secure, then weaving in both ends later. This works well for bulky yarns and any yarn where the color change falls at a seam.

For mid-row joins, particularly in colorwork or when you run out of yarn unexpectedly, you have several options. The Russian join involves threading both the old and new yarn back through themselves using a tapestry needle to create an interlocked loop. It is strong and nearly invisible but requires a bit of practice. The spit splice works for feltable wool fibers: you untwist the plies at the end of each yarn length, remove a few plies from each, overlap them, wet them with a bit of moisture, and rub them together briskly in your palms. The friction and moisture felt the fibers together into a nearly seamless join with no ends to weave in.

When weaving in ends with a tapestry needle, the key is to go in multiple directions rather than just straight along a path. Weave a few stitches one way, reverse direction, and then weave at a slight diagonal. This distributes the tension and prevents the end from working its way loose with wear and washing.

Learning to Read Patterns Fluently

At the 105 level, you should begin treating knitting patterns less like recipes to follow and more like instructions to decode. Patterns are written in a compressed shorthand, and fluency with that shorthand opens up an enormous range of projects.

Most patterns follow a standard abbreviation system. K means knit, P means purl, sl means slip, yo means yarn over, and so on. But patterns also include instructions phrased as mathematical logic: knit to last 3 sts, k2tog, k1. This means knit across the row until three stitches remain on your left needle, then perform a k2tog decrease, then knit the final stitch. Understanding how to parse these instructions, visualizing what they produce in the fabric, is the beginning of real pattern literacy.

Charts, which represent stitch patterns visually, are equally important to learn. A knitting chart is a grid where each square represents one stitch and each row of squares represents one row of knitting. Symbols in the squares represent different stitches or techniques. Charts are read from the bottom up, and for flat knitting, right-side rows are read from right to left while wrong-side rows are read from left to right. For circular knitting, every row of the chart is read from right to left. Once you get comfortable reading charts, you will often find them faster and more intuitive than written row-by-row instructions, especially for complex lace or colorwork.

Building a Practice Habit

Everything described in this post is a skill that improves with repetition. The knitters who develop the fastest are the ones who approach every project with at least one small learning goal. Maybe this sweater is the one where you finally master short rows. Maybe this pair of socks is where you nail German heel construction. Maybe this lace shawl is where you commit to reading every chart without ever consulting the written instructions below it.

Keep a simple project journal. Write down what technique you practiced, what went wrong, and what you figured out. Patterns you have completed, yarns you used, and needle sizes that worked for your gauge at that point in time are all valuable information to have on hand when you return to a similar project months or years later.

Knitting communities, whether in person at a local yarn shop or online through forums and social platforms, are also enormously helpful. Seeing how other knitters solve the same problems, watching videos of unfamiliar techniques from multiple teachers, and asking questions in a low-stakes environment all accelerate your growth. Nobody learns to knit in isolation, and the tradition of passing these skills from hand to hand and generation to generation is part of what makes knitting so enduring.

The needles are in your hands. The yarn is ready. Keep going.