How to Understand Common Knitting Abbreviations

Especially when just starting out with the beautiful craft of knitting and for seasoned knitters, not everyone knows how to read patterns, particularly those little abbreviations. Many people learn the craft because they are taught by doing. Here are five steps to understand five common knitting abbreviations that you might come across in a pattern. Once the abbreviations are deciphered, you might think, that’s was so easy, I should have known. But when you are in a creative mode, sometimes you just can’t imagine what DPN is.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Patience
• Practice

1. DPN stands for Double Pointed Needles. This is a common one that can stump many. One can use DPN's for knitting socks, creating circular patterns, knitting hats, creating Icords and many other uses.

2. YO stands for Yarn Over. You will bring your yarn over your needle from the front to the back. You will do this for increase stitches, to create patterns and button holes or whatever the designer is trying to achieve with the project.

3. Sl stands for the knitter to Slip a Stitch from one needle to the other. You will be asked to do this either Kwise or Pwise. Slipped stitches can create beautiful patterns in your knitting, especially when two different colors are used.

4. Kwise stands for Knit wise. So if your pattern asked you to Slip a stitch Kwise, you will insert your needle as if to knit. If asked to slip a stitch Pwise, you will insert your needle as if to purl.