Tinking revisited
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Good morning.
I have been asked about taking out stitches that are on circular needles. Taking out stitches in a knitted work is tricky. When I first started knitting I would discover a mistake and say a few rude things to the project I was working on and tear the whole thing out and start again. I really do not like starting things over. But I was still tearing out projects that I discovered a mistake in when I started shopping at Yarn for All Seasons.
Dodie, my friend and mentor, taught me how to tink. It is as important as learning to knit and purl. It is easy and a skill that every knitter, in my opinion, should have.
Tinking:
Examine the piece you are working on and find the problem. The problem is, of course, what needs to be taken out and reknit. I usually mark the problem with a stitch marker. If the candidate for thinking is in the same row you may want to skip the marker. If it is several rows back, trust me, mark the place.
Put the point of the left hand needle in the stitch below the row you had been working on. Pull the stitch onto the left hand needle and slip the upper stitch (the one on the right hand needle) off and pull the yarn so that the upper stitch is gone.
Because the word “purl” comes out “lrup” I use the word tinking for taking out both knitting and purling.
The one thing to remember is to get those lower row stitches back onto the left needle in the same direction they were knit or purled onto the right needle. Otherwise, when you get to replacing the stitches, they are difficult to re-knit or re-purl. And those re-knit/re-purled stitches are visible in the finished work. I have done that frequently in my early knitting days and have ended up taking out work that I wanted to avoid taking out by the tinking. Some of my more frustrating knitting moments.
So that is tinking. I work on circular needles, as I have said before, and switch to double point needles for topping off. I have tinked on the double points, too. And the method is the same as on the circular.
Until I learned to tink, I was seriously considering crocheting my caps because crochet is so easy to pull out and redo. But thanks to Dodie, I can now tink my projects, if necessary, as well as I can knit or purl them in the first place.
Happy knitting. Granny LJ