Claudia sent in a photo to share of her Danbury Coat. Great job! and what a beautiful location.  

Claudia and her husband, Larry, and their miniature chihuahua D.O.G. (pronounced Dee OH Gee)

When doing the Rib Stitch, we create each rib with 2 stitches that form a pair.  To maintain the pairs or ribs, we need to start on same needles with each row, and that is the first to the third needles.  But, what happens when we decrease a stitch at beginning of row; we alter the formation of the pairs, or, we leave only one stitch for the first rib.

So, we must start the knitting by skipping that lonely single stitch, and start with the next rib.  So, the first stitch stands alone, and we start the row on needles 2 and 4.  This will keep the pairs and the ribs continuing without shifting.  The first stitch will be picked up in the return of the circular.

Then, when we do another decrease, we will eliminate the lonely first stitch.  So the next pair of stitches becomes the needles 1 and 3.  So we will continue the knitting by going back to the original sequence.

What if we increase now.  Well, we just added the lonely first stitch back and we would shift back to the 2 and 4 starting for each row.

The important thing here is to compensate for the loss of a part of a rib and maintain all the others in their sequence.

When your knitting starts with a smaller amount of stitches, and then widens with many additional stitches, you will use this type of increase.  For instance, if you want to go from say 10 stitches to 30 stitches in the next row, how do you do this? Actually it is quite simple to do.  This addition of stitches can be all on one end of the existing knitting or added to both ends.

Example:  In the Men’s Cabin slippers, this type of increase is needed.  Another example is the Bold Stripe Sweater.

Let’s say that you have been knitting with 10 needles and you have one loop on each needle and you want to go to 30 stitches in the next row. You are increasing 10 stitches on each side to have a total of 30 stitches.  You will Cast On 10 new stitches at front of knitting and 10 new stitches at back of knitting.

• First, cut the yarn of your 10 stitches of the current knitting.
• Make a loop knot in yarn supply, and place loop on the needle 10 to the left of your knitting, on board farthest from knitter. (This is like starting from the beginning)

• Weave the yarn around the bare needles in pattern.  When you get to the cut end of yarn at beginning of current knitting, tie the new yarn to the cut tail of yarn.  Weave across the existing knitting and continue for 10 additional more needles.

• Weave back, to finish your circular over all 30 stitches.
• Hook over the 10 stitches in the middle (they have 2 loops on each needle.) Place  an anchor yarn over the 2 areas where you just started new stitches.  These are new Cast On stitches.  They have only 1 loop at this time.

• Weave another circular over all 30 stitches and hook over all.  You now have 30 stitches on your board.  You will want to Bind Off the new stitches for a finished edge once piece is completed.
• This process is used on sweaters where the sleeves are knit into the front and back of the sweater.  The entire piece is one continous piece of knitting.  If you’re doing stripes, you can always do the increase in different color for next stripe.

There seems to be some confusion on these two stitches-Are they really pretty much the same?  Well, the simple answer is yes.  However, there was enough of a difference that made us decide to give the new weaving process a new name.  We didn’t want to go into any pattern done in Crisscross and change it suddenly, so we called the new procedure by a different name.

CrissCross Stitch  -2 weave patterns.  The first is starting on needle #4 and down to #3.

  Then the next row was starting on needle #3 and down to #2.

What this does is shift the yarn over to the next needles with the same angles.  We received a lot of questions about how to keep track of which weave you completed and which weave was to be done next. 

So, we played with it and asked some other knitters how they accomplished the same type of stitch.  The Box Stitch was the answer:

Box Stitch - First row starts with needle #1 to #4 and weave every other needle.

The next row starts with needle #1 to #3, then weave consecutive #2 down to #5 and then every other.

This is easier to keep track of because both rows start out on needle #1.

Both shift only 1 needle on both rows, but the Box stitch is a larger stretch from #1 to #4 compared to the crisscross which stretches from #4 to #3.  The difference is a more bold box effect from the box stitch than in the crisscross.

So, not a lot of difference other than more definition in the depth of the look of the stitch and its a little easier to keep track of where you are.  They are both great stitches and may not look too different.  so, we figure everyone will pick the one that they enjoy doing the most and stick with it.  They are certainly interchangeable in any pattern.

PHOTO OF BOX STITCH (blue)  CRISS CROSS (gray)