How to Knit Increases or Add Stitches

Video Transcript

"Hi, I’m Kelsey. I’ve been knitting for 10 years, and I’m a member of several knitting organizations. I’m going to talk to you right now about increases. If you know how to knit and to pearl, you can create yourself a pretty little square right there, but if you want to make something besides a scarf or a very boxy sweater, you’re going to want to change the shape of your knitted item. The way to do that is through increasing, adding more stitches, or decreasing, taking away stitches. So right now, I’m gonna show you how to add stitches when you’re knitting on the knit side. Once you get to the point where you want to add a stitch, this is the most basic sort of increase. You knit into the front and the back of the stitch. It’s also known as a bar increase. It doesn’t leave a hole, and it’s very nice and tight. It does leave a small bar though on the front, so you can see it and it is visible. When you get to the point in the stitch that you want to increase on, and you start just as you normally would. You go in from left to right, throw the yarn over, pull it through, but stop before you reach that left hand needle. Instead, you want to knit another stitch into the back of that same stitch on the left needle. So you take your needle, without having slipped that one on the left hand needle, take your right hand needle and go into the back of the stitch from left to right, throw the yarn around, and pull it through. Now you can slip it off the needle. Now both of these stitches came from that one stitch on the left hand side. That’s a visible increase, it leaves a bar. I’m going to show you now how to do an invisible increase. You get to the stitch that you want to increase, but instead of going ahead and knitting into it, what you’re going to want to do is knit into the stitch below it. If you turn the needle towards you, you can see that loop, that lump back there on the back. You want to stick the needle into that lump like so, bring the yarn over the needle, pull it out, and then go ahead and knit that stitch normally and slide it off the needle. That’s going to give you a nice little increase that’s invisible. It’s similar, but it doesn’t leave a bar. Those are two basic kinds of increases, but they’re certainly not the only kinds of increases. There are many different ways to increase. Often if you’re knitting from a pattern, the pattern will tell you which one to use, and you can look it up in the glossary of a book how to use that increase. If you’re working on your own and you want to add stitches, those are two good ways to do it. "