The Master Hand Knitting Level 1 application involves, among other things, 18 swatches demonstrating good execution of a handful of techniques. I knitted these 18 swatches back in 2022, when I was much more optimistic (blind?) about the quality of my knitting. Sure, I thought, it looks a little like this “rowing out” thing on the edges, but it’s not that bad and the evaluators won’t notice!

But looking again with fresh eyes in 2024, I was wrong, wrong, wrong. I row out, and it’s quite obvious.

Here’s my Swatch #2 from 2022 - 1x1 rib followed by stockinette. I’ve taken a photo of the wrong side, and you can see the distinct “gutters” coming out:

An off-white knit swatch, purl-bumps-up, on a foam mat. Pairs of purl bump rows are grouped together with distinctive "gutters" between them, but only at the edges of the work; the middle of the work is consistent and smooth.

These are a little more obvious when the fabric is stretched out:

The same swatch, still wrong-side-up, pinned open to stretch out the edge. The purl bump rows "pair up", tugging towards each other and away from the pairs on either side.

It’s visible on the front side, too; the selvedge column is expected to be wonky but the column of stitches next to the selvedge ought to be tidy. Instead, mine has stitches that alternate between tight and loose, making a noticeable, regular pattern on the right side:

The same knit swatch, right side up. The second-to-edge row of knitting has some stitches that are large with an exaggerated loop, and some that are regular sized.

The more I stared at these, and the more I answered the question packet about how evil these are and how to fix them, the more I longed to throw out all my knitted work from 2022 and start again - after figuring out what I’m doing wrong.

Diagnosis

The questions worksheet that comes with the MHK packet kind of leads you to sort out your own ills. You spend a lot of time evaluating your own knitting, before it ever goes in the mail for the experts. And you read, read, read. Some questions are posed like you’re answering them to help someone else, which in this case helped me realize I need to help me, too! And you need to cite all your sources - which is how I started my own diagnosis.

The question asked, paraphrased, specifically how a knitter with edge gutters could solve their tension problems. I started with my new favorite knitting hack book - Patty Lyons’ Knitting Bag of Tricks. Patty describes the source of this problem as a loose last stitch of the row, and to solve it, she has you tug the first stitch of the next row, transferring the tug into the yarn from the last of the previous row to neaten up that stitch. So I cast on a little microswatch and tried it out - but I quickly realized that this problem Patty describes is not the problem I’m having!

Instead of having a tidy first stitch and a messy stitch last stitch, I noticed that even with Patty’s hack I still had gutters. In fact, my “pairs” of purl bumps were just bound together more tightly and the gutters between them were more obvious! I realized that instead, the problem was that as I reached the end of every row, the last stitch I wanted to knit into - that is, the first stitch of the previous row - was loose and baggy. No good!

So I tried a hack that I used in my MHK swatches in 2022 to neaten up the bindoff - working the first stitch of the row below wrapping backwards, to get rid of some of the extra yarn. I did another section of my microswatch this way, hoping to solve it on my own without extra sources (I’m like this, I don’t know why), but the problem persisted.

I kept digging. I watched a video (eurgh!) by Heather Sorta, who is certified through the same program that I’m working on. In her video on tension issues, Heather explains that this happens because, as you knit the row, a bit of slack on each stitch in the row below gets tugged into the next stitch, and the next, and the next, until you have a big old gappy last stitch with nowhere for that yarn to go. She suggests wrapping the first handful of stitches backwards on each row. Sounds handy, but I had one problem with this description. She suggests that every wrapped-backwards (Eastern wrapped) stitch is, by nature, tighter than each wrapped-forwards (Western wrapped) stitch. And I just don’t think that’s true!

Rather, I can observe in my own knitting that the part of changing wrap direction that makes stitches smaller is the transition between wrap directions. Think about it - if you knit 3 stitches Western-wrapped, your yarn spirals all the way around your needle 3 times. If you knit 3 stitches Eastern-wrapped, your yarn spirals all the way around your needle 3 times, but in the opposite direction. But when you knit Eastern, then Western, then Eastern, your yarn actually doesn’t spiral all the way around the needle - it zigzags, turning a sharp corner at each pair of legs where it reverses direction. Hopefully this photo illustrates it:

About a dozen stitches mounted on a needle. The first six change wrap direction back and forth, but only the last switch - the fifth and sixth stitches - is really visibly pulling the legs forward on the stitches below.

It’s not totally clear, because the front of the fabric doesn’t warp as much when working this way, but I find it much more obvious looking at the purl side:

The purl side of a stockinette swatch, only the first nine stitches knitted. The wrap direction reverses every other stitch for the first five stitches or so; stitches 2 and 3 are paired tightly together, with the corner in the yarn visible, as are stitches 4 and 5. It's clear the yarn doesn't wrap all the way around the needle, but reverses direction.

From the purl side, you can see where the yarn turns around - look at the 2-3 and 4-5 stitches in that shot. The heads of the stitches below are pulled into a noticeable chevron shape, and the yarn only makes it around maybe 3/4 of the needle circumference before turning around and heading back.

Fixing My Own Knitting

For me, this problem was pretty pronounced, and I already knit quite tightly so just one reverse-wrap like I had tried before wasn’t cutting the mustard. So I swatched - it is Halloween, after all - until I came up with the right number of wraps. When starting a purl row - that is, the row I’m going to knit into later - I wrap regular, reverse, regular, reverse, regular. So I get 4 direction changes waiting for me at the end of the every knit row. However, for rows I’m purling into, I found this wasn’t quite enough; instead, when I start a knit row, I wrap reverse, regular, reverse, regular, reverse, regular. That leaves me with, by my guesstimation, about 5.5 reversals. (The one at the beginning of the row kinda counts, but I think isn’t as pronounced, since the yarn is traveling vertically no matter what.)

The results had me skipping with glee and knitting a full length swatch to show off.

Lo, the wrong side, gutter-free, even when stretched:

The new swatch, pinned flat but not stretched, wrong-side-up. There are no visible gutters between rows of purl bumps - it's just a uniformly bumpy surface.

The new swatch, now pinned stretched a little open. Each purl bump row stands confidently on its own; there's no "pairing" and the gap between purl rows is uniform.

And the right side! So visually tidy! Here’s the “knitting into” side:

The edge of the right side of the new swatch. It's pinned flat but not stretched. The stitches next to the selvedge column are uniform in size and there is no visual repeating pattern of overlarge stitches.

The “purling into” side is still a little bit distorted; on the game time swatches I may adjust my method so I’m working 6 full reversals into the beginning of each row instead.

The other edge of the right side of the new swatch. It's pinned flat, but not stretched open. The stitches are fairly uniform, but maybe there are a few overlarge stitches here and there.

So my takeaway is so: the ends of my rows are fine, but the beginnings are loose. And I probably pull the stitches too far open when working, making the looseness gather even worse in the end of each row. The solutions that Patty suggests are for the opposite problem from the one I have, so when I’m carefully tightening the first stitches of each row, I need to also be careful not to tug on the last stitch from the row before, which tightens a stitch that is already at the correct tension.

So Now What?

This problem shows up in nearly all my swatches from the MHK program. There are a scant few swatches that don’t have stockinette all the way up to the edge: one that’s mostly garter with a bit of 2x2 ribbing, and one that’s all seed. The seed one looks fine. The garter itself is fine, but edges of my rib show the issue a bit, too. (Not to mention, I found citations suggesting a different kind of increase than the one I used in the ribbing swatches.) I’ll evaluate each swatch as I go, but it’s likely that I’ll reknit all of them except for the seed swatch.

So are you like… okay?

This is actually fine! I’m more excited about this than I have been all week working on the citations and answers and formatting and editing down my blocking paper (oh GOD), because this is what I wanted to get out of the program: I want my knitting to get better, even the tiny details that most knitters are too polite to notice. And it actually doesn’t come out to all that much work I need to do over; the citations for each swatch are still good, and in all honesty, 18 4x4 swatches is just not that much knitting. I ordered new yarn (because no way in hell am I frogging, resetting, and drying all those little baby skeins) and I’ll set out on redoing the swatches today; hopefully I won’t finish too soon before my KnitPicks order shows up.

And I have plenty of time. Before this setback, I thought that I’d be done with the packet and pop it in the mail by the end of next week. Y’all, I’m not going back to work until Christmas. We’ve got time.

So, here I go, grinning once again into the knitting breach.