The tuck stitch in knitting can be used in some quite amazing ways to create beautiful and interesting textured fabric.

Video Tutorial – Tuck Stitch

The two patterns above are the Suke-Suke Shawl by Olga Buraya-Kefelian and the Tucked Hat by Woolly Wormhead.

Both patterns use a technique called the tuck stitch, which is something I first learned to do when I was machine knitting and when I tried to replicate the technique in hand-knitting, I found it very difficult to do.  If you’ve ever done a hem on a knitted garment by knitting the cast on stitch with its corresponding stitch a number of rows later, you’ve done a tuck stitch.  When you’re picking up one of your cast-on stitches, it’s relatively easy to do this technique, but when you’re picking up a stitch 10 rows down from your current row, I found it impossible to count down rows on the back of my work.

So, I created a technique (or probably unvented a technique using Elizabeth Zimmermann’s term) to easily identify a stitch 10 rows directly beneath the current stitch I was working on.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, there’s a tutorial I created that will hopefully explain it a little better:

If you link to the YouTube page for the video, there are also a few links in the comments to purchase the coilless (coil-less) safety pins I use for this technique.

Current Knitting

I’m continuing to bang away at the London Beanies.

The Noro colorways in the Hanabatake yarn are really keeping this project interesting…I just hope the guys shopping at Easton Mountain gift shop find the colors equally as appealing.