Knitting and Increases

 Have you considered how many ways there are to increase your knitting?  When I learned to knit at the age of eight, the book I learned from showed only the knit in front and back.  It didn't even clue in the new knitter that a yarn over could be an increase.  Though, I guarantee you I had plenty of those accidentally.  For many knitting years, that was the only increase I used.  In raglans, it was less than satisfactory but I could live with it.  Occasionally I used the yarnover to increase but I was not always happy about the hole, even if it gave a slightly different look.

Let's fast forward to 15 or so years ago.  I had been getting books from the library and thrift stores but not so much online yet.  Usually, there were different increases and decreases in the "special" stitches section and I took note of them.  Now there are a plethora of websites, youtube videos, books, and other resources to show you a huge assortment of increases.

A list of major types of increases would include

• yarnover increases
• bar increases also known as M1 increases
• lifted increases
• working two or more stitches in one stitch
• cast on in the middle of a row

These can be made to lean left or right or just kind of sit there in the middle pushing both sides out.  And to think for so many years I used just the knit in the front and back of a stitch.  But even that was hard for me to get because I knit through the back loop and had twisted stitches. As a child with no one to teach me and a book that didn't show me where I had gone wrong, just the right way to do it the first time, I had a hard time until I got it figured out.  

Please be aware, that there are only two ways to increase crochet.  One is to crochet more than one stitch in the stitch in the row below OR add chain stitches which adds a hole like a yarn over increase.  This doesn't mean that these two can't be used to great effect and artistry.  In the future I will look into these more in depth and show pictures of them.