tutorial: picking up stitches

The body of the new baby sweater is finished, and I'm picking up stitches along the fronts for the button bands. I thought I'd stop and take some pictures and do a little tutorial for any of you readers who have never picked up stitches for button bands (or other things, for that matter) before. You can click on any of these pictures to see a much larger image.

If you look carefully at your cardigan fronts, you'll see that between each column of stitches is a little ladder of yarn that makes a column of little holes. The column of holes you want to work with is the one between the very first column of stitches of your cardigan front and the column of stitches next to it.


Hold your work so that the right side is facing up and the button band is closest to your chest (your columns of stitches will be running sideways). Tie your working yarn to the back side of the work at the very right edge of the front. Poke the tip of your needle into the first hole (the one farthest to the right) in the column you were just looking at, from the front side into the back side. In the photo below, I've already picked up some stitches, but the process is exactly the same:


Here is what it looks like from the back side of the work:


Wrap your working yarn around your needle the way you would wrap the yarn if you were making a stitch.


Pull the loop of yarn you just wrapped around the needle from the back side into the front side of the work.


As you are picking up stitches, you are going to need to skip a hole every once in a while, because rows are shorter than stitches are wide. (Recall that gauge is sometimes given for stitches and rows, and it will say things like "5 stitches and 7 rows = 1 inch.") In this case, I need to skip every fourth hole.


When you get to the end of your cardigan front, you will have a whole bunch of loops of yarn on your needle, ready to turn and work just like regular knitting!