Last month I told you a bit about the continuing saga of me knitting an argyle vest, which has given me lots of opportunities for writing tutorials about different skills that were used in making it.
That particular post was about duplicate stitch, which is essential for making the diagonal lines that are what makes it look like argyle.
It also gave me a chance to write about picking up stitches, because it had just about every scenario in which you might need to pick up stitches in one place.
The vest has a deep scoop neck, so there were places to pick up stitches that were straight horizontal (bound off edge at the bottom of the neckline), straight vertical along the sides and along a curve/diagonal in between.
I go into a lot more detail in the post about how to actually go about picking up all these stitches in different locations, but there are a couple of main things you should know if you need to pick up a lot of stitches for a project.
First: if you’re picking up a lot of stitches, add some locking stitch markers, at least to divide the area in half if not in quarters or more. This will help you make sure you’re picking up the right number of stitches in each section, so if you’re wildly off you can just rip out a little bit and try again.
Second: stitch counts in patterns are not magic. It’s not the end of the world if you’re off by a few in either direction, so long as you have the stitch multiple needed to complete the edging. You can always increase or decrease a couple of stitches in the first round if you need to. No one is going to count, and as long as the edge lies flat (or looks the way it’s supposed to) when you’re done it’s totally fine.
Check out all the tips for picking up stitches at Our Daily Craft.
