Sherilyn KAL – Reading your knitting and fixing a mistake

I hope you are all getting along well with the pattern. I’ve put together some tips which will help you read your knitting, give charts a try or fix a mistake. The mistake is in my Sherilyn and I did not make it just so I could write this blog post, but it sure was helpful. It’s something I do quite often in my own knitting and have found it’s a common mistake – a missed yarn over. 

Because each side panel of Sherilyn is identical and it’s so geometric it’s a good pattern for learning to read your knitting. Also if you are unfamiliar with working from charts this is a good one to learn from. Ysolda wrote this blog post a few years ago Using charts, even if you hate them, if you are unfamiliar with using charts I suggest taking a read through it. There are some good visual cues for identifying the stitches on the charts for Sherilyn and then applying that to the knitting. 

Visual cues

• The centre twisted stitch is highlighted by a yarnover on each side. 
• If you have used markers for the edging stitches those will also be easy to identify.
• The three stitch columns – which also help identify the repeat section. One nice thing about this pattern is the number of times you do the repeat corresponds to the times you’ve done the section. eg. first time through section 2 = 1 repeat, second time through section 2 = 2 repeats, and so on.

If you like markers you may want to add them to mark the repeat section in each side panel. If you are looking at your knitting the beginning of the repeat is between the first and second stitch of the first column, and the end of the repeat is after the first stitch of the second column.

Identifying the issue

If you do encounter an issue with your knitting the majority of the time it will be one stitch out and I’d say the most common culprits are either a missed yarn over (like my example below) or forgetting to pass a slipped stitch over.  

To find the mistake I suggested breaking the shawl into parts – side panels, edging stitches, centre stitch and repeats – so it’s a bit easier to pinpoint where the issue is. 

Side panels

If you can’t see where the issue is count each side panel to check that you have the correct number of stitches for that row.  This should identify which side panel has gone wrong if it’s not already evident. 

Edging stitches 

Are the edging stitches correct?  2 or 4 sts if you need a refresher refer back to this post .

Repeats

If you are following the written directions these are the stitches between ** and rep from **, if you are using the chart these are the stitches within the red box. For this pattern the number of stitches within each repeat never changes it is always 18 stitches. 

If you have used markers to mark the repeat are the correct number of stitches between the markers.  

If you haven’t used markers then the way I like to do it is make sure the mesh stitch looks correct between the three stitch columns – 15 stitches or a quick visual check that the stitches are in groups of three for the mesh stitch.  

Side panels outside of the repeat

Once you’ve checked all the parts above move on to the parts of the side panel outside of the repeat. Because you’ve broken down the row you now have a much smaller number of stitches to review. Are the stitches correct between the edging and the beginning of the repeat, and then finally are they correct between the end of the repeat the centre stitch.

This is where my error is, you can see in the picture that I missed a yarn over two rows back in row 7 before the ssk. Instead of ripping back three and a half rows I’m going fix it. 

Fixing a missing yarn over

When I get to the point above where the yarn over should have been on row 11. I’ll pick up the stitch, using a crochet hook. 

Pull the stitches apart to make space to pick up the missing stitch.

Place the stitch onto the left needle and then you are ready to continue with the rest of the row. 

Questions

Do you have any questions or techniques you would like me to cover? Leave a comment and I will try to answer them in the next post on Monday 16 September. 

I do plan on addressing casting off and blocking your finished shawl.