Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Popcorn Stitch

This fun stitch is much like a bobble, however, in my opinion, faster and easier!  There really is no set pattern - you can place the popcorn stitches where ever you like.  Place one here, two there... or grab some graph paper and chart out a nice even pattern for yourself.  The choice is yours.

Sample knit with Cascade 220 on US Size 6


Work with any number of stitches.  Knit to the place where you would like to have a popcorn stitch.  Now, you will turn one stitch into four.  Don't panic, I promise it isn't hard!  To do this, all you have to do is:

Knit into the next stitch on the left needle, but don't drop it from the needle.  Leaving the stitch on the needle, bring your yarn to the front of the work and purl into the same stitch.  Leave the stitch on your left needle, and take the yarn to the back of the work, and again knit into the stitch.  Don't drop from the left needle just yet.  Once more, bring the yarn to the front of the work, and purl one last time.  Now you can drop the stitch from the left needle.

Knit until you reach the spot where you'd like to have another popcorn stitch, and repeat the above, turning one stitch into four.

Now, when you've reached the end of the row, turn the work as you normally would.  Knit until you reach your increased stitches.  You need to decrease these 4 back down to 1.  Simply slip the next 3 stitches from the left to right needle.  Knit the 4th stitch.  Now, pass the slipped stitches over the knit stitch, one at a time.  You now have 1 stitch again.  Repeat for all popcorn stitches.

And there you go!  If you are having a hard time picturing how to do this stitch, here is a video to help you out.

2 comments:

Kelly Aiello said...

What color of yarn would look best with the popcorn stitches?

Sapphires-N-Purls said...

Really, you can use any color you like, but I think they would probably stand out better on a lighter colored solid yarn. I think the yarn I used in the video kind of hid the popcorns a little bit. Just my opinion. :0)