Knitting: Lace Stitch, Long Tail Cast-On, Lifeline

1. Lace Stitch

It took me five attempts to get the first row right on this stitch. I kept missing yarn overs and ending up with somewhat arbitrary numbers of stitches. Lace stitch is a two row pattern, working on x stitches where x = 1 (mod 4).

1. purl (wrong side)
2. knit 1, (yarn over, slip one as if to knit, knit two together, slip the slipped stitch over the knit two together, yarn over, knit)* repeat

2. Long Tail Cast-On

I've always hated casting on. Well, that was until I came across long tail cast on. It gives a nice even edge and is quick and easy to do once you get the hang of it.

3. Lifeline

One of the reasons I prefer crochet over knitting is it's so much easier to recover from a mistake and undo several rows. When I try this with knitting, I drop stitches, get the stitched twisty or just get in a horrible mess. Well, I just learnt about a lifeline. What you do is slip a thin yarn through all the stitches on a row so that if you do make a mistake, you can easily pick up from that row again! I wish I'd known this when I was trying the lace stitch and had to cast on six times in the end to just do a small sample!