Stitches

How do I pick up dropped stitches in knitting?

I am working on the neck of a rolled sweater pattern. I am supposed to pick up 84 stitches to start the neck roll. I don't have 84 around the edge to pick up. Now what do I do?

Public Comments

1. small vaccum cleaner :)
2. This doesn't sound like you dropped any stitches. What you do is to count how many rows you do have and increase evenly spaced around the neck opening. For instance, is you have maybe 60, you'll have to increase 12 on the front, and twelve on the back. Just space them out, and don't do a bunch all in one small area. You could knit 5 sts and do an increase, work the next 5 and do an increase, until you have 42 on one side. If you did drop a stitch, you'll see it hanging down someplace with a hole. In this case I would take a crochet hook and pull the top two threads through the loop, and work my way up. Unfortunatelty, it'll never look right. When I knit I constantly count my stitches, so I never have to rip out more than a row or two.
3. so it's not that you lost a stitch, you just need to make a new one. when picking up stitches, you need to make sure that you do it evenly across your work. first, divide the space evenly. i usually go half, then half again, then half a third time. this gives me eight equal segments that i mark with a scrap piece of yarn. you're going to alternate picking up 10 or 11 stitches in each segment. if you have fewer spaces than needed, you simply pick up twice in the same stitch (usually in the middle of the segment). if you have too many spaces, then you skip evenly across the segment. i hope this helps, email me if you need more info. happy knitting.
4. Um, if your shoulders are seamed, try this on the intended wearer first, please, and make sure that it fits over this person's head before you go much further, especially if you have significantly fewer than 84 stitches. If your neckline stitches are already bound off on the back and front(s) you may not have enough stretch to get it on comfortably and that is much easier to deal with now. If it does fit, then determine how many fewer stitches than 84 you do have and then determine how many more stitches you need to pick up to make 84 and figure the rate of increase (say you need 6 stitches more, then pick up 3 extra by picking up in the front and back loops of a stitch along the front neck, and 3 more along the back, spacing them out fairly evenly). If you need a lot more than this, you may have to check that you didn't inadvertanly make the wrong number of decreases or sew the shoulders together too far into the neckline.