Whenever I teach a class, I can be fairly certain that I will come out learning something myself. This has never been truer than my recent sock class at Wild Purls in Billings, Montana. I was explaining how to count slipped edge stitches along the selvedges of a heel flap when Joyce Fletcher mentioned the method she developed out of desperation.
Unable to convince herself that she could tell the difference between slipped and knitted stitches, Joyce turned to the wrong side of the flap (shown here on a completed sock) hoping that the slipped stitches would be more visible than on the right side. On first inspection, they’re not.
But Joyce took a spare needle and poked around to find that it was pretty easy to slip the needle under the horizontal strand associated with each slipped stitch.
Joyce stumbled on a foolproof method that had the rest of us in awe. There are 8 rows of slipped stitches in the heel flap in this example and I can assure you that they are much easier to count from this perspective. I hope you can make use of Joyce’s trick next time you have to count rows of slipped stitches.
Very cool idea! Thanks for posting the pictures
Brilliant! I was having this issue last night!
Thank you for sharing Joyce’s tip. This will take one stressor out of my knitting.
I’ve done that very same thing – 🙂
So how many rows total does that mean?
Each slipped stitch represents two rows of knitting. Eight slipped stitches represents 16 rows.
Fascinating hack! Of course, I had to see how this looked on mine. I’m relieved that I have the right number of rows on my slipped stitch heel, but a side note…it’s a little harder to count with variegated yarn!