Ribbing

Hi, I am Toni Lipe with Toni's Design Studio. Today, we are talking about combining the knit and the purl stitches. What we are going to discuss first is ribbing. Ribbing is a series of knit and purl stitches that is useful around cuffs or sleeves, the edgings of necks and sometimes, just for an allover sweater appeal.

The ribbing that you do is a combination of knit one-purl one; knit one-purl one or you can do a 2x1 rib or a 3x1 rib. Here, we have knitting, purling, knitting, purling, knitting, purling. On the lower part of the sample, we have a 2x2 rib with knit two stitches, with purl two stitches. Now, what you do when you want to establish or sequence your ribbing is to start with your knitting and first we will do the 1x1 rib which is knit one stitch and bring your yarn to the front then purl one stitch, yarn to the back knit one stitch, yarn to the front purl one stitch. You have to remember as you are doing your ribbing to always keep your yarn in back for the knit stitch and your yarn in front for the purl stitch. If you don't, you will just end up with a mess.

So, we continue on across the row knitting one stitch, purling one stitch, flipping the yarn back and forth as we go. It's a little bit slower than just a straight stockinette stitch because you have to be conscious of moving your yarn back and forth, purling, knitting and purling. Now, when you reverse your work to do the next row, you switch your knitting to your left hand needle and you have your empty needle in your right hand. It's important to remember to knit the knit stitches and purl the purl stitches. Our last stitch on our row was a purl stitch so we turn it over and we can see that that's where we start with the knit stitch and this will create a nice long ladder of stitches and a nice stretchy edging for your sweater, purling, knitting, yarn in the front for purling, yarn in the back for knitting. It takes a little bit more arm motion but it's a worthy effort and this is the ribbing that we are doing right now, this 1x1. It actually pulls together so nicely that it looks like it's just a series of knit stitches but there are actually, purl stitches on the other side and if you flip it over, it looks the same but it's actually reversed.

Next, let's try the knit two purl two ribbing. Alright, there we have completed two rows of our 1x1 rib. Now let's do our 2x2 rib. Knit two stitches, yarn in the front, purl two stitches; yarn in the back knit two stitches. This 2x2 ribbing and the one by ribbing is excellent for socks, the cuffs of socks. It helps to keep them up because it creates that nice stretchy edge and alright, knitting two more then purling two more and if we continued on knitting our knit stitches, purling our purl stitches we would end up with our 2x2 rib. The 3x1 rib is done in the same way, knitting three stitches, purling one stitch, knitting three stitches, purling one stitch, reversing then purling three stitches, knitting one stitch.

So, that's about ribbing. Next, we are going to talk about the Moss Stitch.