I'm fed up!

To the left, specially under my logo, ugly ribbing. To the right, improved ribbing.

That's what my niece Martina shouted at her mum last afternoon.

My sister looked at her in astonishment waiting for an explanation and the little one said:

- " Mummy, let's play "I'm fed up" teachers!

Why would a teacher say “I’m fed up!”? Well I see three options here:

a) Martina’s classmates have been very naughty.

b) Martina has been very naughty.

c) Martina & her classmates have been very naughty.

You know children are an endless source of inspiration for posts...and a good laugh.

This little story reminded me of a knitting issue that I was “fed up” with for a while: ribbing.

I always ended up with a column of wanky loose k stitches to the right of the first purl in 2X2 ribbing ,which is the one that I use more frequently.

I tried to fix it by myself by purling tighter (exhausting after a few rows), knitting looser ( not working for me as I ended up knitting with my regular tension) and dropping down 2-3 times the needle size required for the pattern (Hmm!).

I wasn't happy with the results so I had a panic attack. You know there's always someone who tells you that nobody is going to notice but YOU DO! I wanted my ribbing perfect!

Yet again I plunged in the internet and found out that this is a common issue for knitters so it was a huge relief (big wheeze here) to know that I was not the only one having trouble with my loose knitting stitches.

I can't remember the number of web pages, blogs and videos that I read or watched but they were zillions. I'm too lazy today to summarise all the tips to minimize the effect that changing from knitting to purling has in the knitting column to the right of the first purl stitch (haha!) but what I can tell you is that the simplest and easiest one for me is to tug the extra yarn back out of the space between the knit and the purl as explained here.

The other one that works and I'm still working on and need more practice is combined knitting.

OK, OK, I'll behave myself as I am a fairly good Earth being so if you want to read/ watch some of the tips click:

• Here if you want to know how to fix an already knitted ribbing, cable, etc.
• If you want to know how to knit perfect k columns in your ribbing as you go: here, here, here, here, here, here (look for Shalee post), here and here.
• Here, a video that demonstrates the combined knitting technique for the first purl and here to learn how to purl with the combined knitting technique.

That´s all for today which is no small thing.

Catch you next Friday!