Day 13: Cowl Part 4 - Eyelets

Hi there, I'm Jen Lucas from The Knitting Circle. In this video in our 14-day Learn to Knit series, I'm gonna show you how to work the garter and eyelet stitch pattern, which is the stitch pattern that we use in the third and final section of the cowl that we've been knitting. Let's get started. We've finished our purl ridge section and now we're gonna work this garter stitch and eyelet section. And I really love this stitch pattern.

We're gonna be using yarn overs and knit two togethers to create the eyelets, and this is a very basic lace pattern. So you're actually learning how to work lace in this cowl too, which is really great. I really love this stitch pattern, not only 'cause I just think it's pretty and easy, but also, we can use one of these holes as a buttonhole, which is really great. We don't have to worry about any sort of special techniques or anything to create our buttonholes. We can just use one of our little eyelet holes here as a buttonhole.

So we've finished the purl ridge section. This last ridge right along here is our last of our purl ridge section, and now we're gonna go ahead and work the eyelets. So let's start like we did with the other sections and take a look at the pattern. And so here we are on part four, garter stitch and eyelets. So row 71, right side, knit all the stitches, and row 72, wrong side, knit all the stitches.

We're very familiar with those directions at this point, but we'll go over them again in this section. Now we have row 73 and here's where we're gonna be creating our eyelets. And so we have K2, which we know is knit two, and then we have this star here and then you see yo, k2tog. Let's break this down. So first of all, we have yo, which is yarn over, and we have the k2tog, which is knit two stitches together.

So those are things we've already learned in previous videos. So what's the business with the star and the semicolon and the rep and all of this? So you see here we have star, yarn over, knit two together. After the semicolon, it says rep, which we know is repeat, repeat from star to last stitch, because st is stitch, knit one. So what does that mean?

That means we're going to knit two and then we're gonna keep doing yarn over, knit two together, yarn over, knit two together, yarn over, knit two together. We're gonna repeat that until we have one stitch left, we're at the last stitch, and we're gonna finish off the last stitch as a k1 or a knit one. And then row 74, we're gonna knit all the stitches. So this is very common way that you will see a direction written in knitting. Sometimes, instead of the star and the semicolon, you might see parentheses or brackets, and it will just tell you, like it'll have a parentheses and just say yo, k2tog to last stitch.

It really just depends. I wrote it out this way for you just because you are gonna see this come up in a lot of patterns as you move along in your knitting journey, and so I wanted to explain it to you from the very beginning so that you understand what it means. That you're going to repeat from star, so from star is right here, to the last stitch. And really, once you sort of get the hang of reading a direction like this, it becomes very easy. It's just like everything in knitting.

It just takes a little bit of practice and you'll have it mastered in no time. So let's go ahead and start working this eyelet section. So you'll still have your 27 stitches on the needle for your cowl. I've just worked a few. Again, I have 13 stitches here and I just worked a few repeats of the purl ridge, but you'll have a total of those eight purl ridges.

So now, let's work the garter stitch and eyelets. Row one is just knit all the stitches. We're very familiar with this direction at this point. So we're just gonna be knitting. You're definitely gonna have that knit stitch mastered by the end of this cowl.

So we're just knitting across. And just like we've been doing this whole time, then we'll flip it around to the wrong side and work back the other way. So that's row 71. We've knit all the stitches. We're flipping it around.

Row 72, knit all the stitches again. Then we get to row 73, which is where the fun happens where we're creating our eyelets. Just gonna keep working across here. And flip it over. So there you go, we've created our two rows.

So we've created another one of those garter stitch ridges or purl ridges. Now, row 73. We're gonna knit two stitches. Now we're coming to where we're gonna do the yarn over, knit two togethers. So our yarn was in the back 'cause we were knitting.

We're gonna yarn over, so we're bringing the yarn in between the needles, up and over the needle. That creates our yarn over. So now your yarn is to the back again. You're gonna kinda hold it in place there while you work your next stitch, which is knit two together. So there's our yarn over.

Now we're gonna go into knit two together. We're going through both of those stitches. The next two stitches to knit two together, and so you can see now that you've held that yarn over in back, now we created the yarn over, and then there's our knit two together. So now we're gonna just keep repeating that. Yarn over, knit two together.

So to knit two together, we go into the next two stitches together from left to right and knit them together, just like that. So we have another yarn over, knit two together. We're gonna keep doing that. Yarn over, knit two together. Yarn over, knit two together.

You can see we're creating all our eyelets here. Yarn over, knit two together. There we go. We're repeating that to the last stitch. Here I have the last stitch.

I have one stitch left. That's the knit one. So that's row 73 and if we just kinda pull everything apart here, you can see that you can start to see these holes. And where you'll really be able to see them is on the next row after we work the next row, and they're a little bit away from the actual needle. So row 74 is just knit all the stitches.

So just the same thing we've been doing. So when we come to the yarn over here, you just wanna work it the same way that you've been working your knit stitch. You're gonna be going from left to right through the stitch this way. It's just like you're knitting a regular stitch. Sometimes, people find that they wanna try to somehow go through the back like this because they feel like that would be the correct thing to do because that seems like it makes everything a little bit tighter, and it does, but what it does is it twists your yarn over and actually sort of closes the hole, which is not what we want.

We want that hole to be open. So we're gonna just knit, knit it like a regular stitch. We're gonna go from left to right into the stitch, wrap the yarn around, pull the loop through, and take the yarn over off the left needle so we're left with the stitch on the right needle. So then we're just knitting the next stitch. Here's another yarn over, just working into it the same way that you would work a regular knit stitch.

And so we're just gonna keep working across this row here to the end, and then we'll go ahead and take a look at what we got here. So that was row 74. And here we are. And so you can see you have these eyelets that are being created here. You can start to see the holes being formed.

And so now we're going to repeat those four rows, rows 71 to 74. We're gonna repeat those seven times. So it's just like before with the purl ridge section. So if we're looking at my finished cowl here, here's the first one we just did. And now we're gonna repeat those four rows seven times.

So basically, we're gonna be creating the eyelets seven more times. So one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. So that means you have your first ones here plus another seven, so that's eight. So you should have eight rows of eyelets, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Again, like the purl ridge, you could be using a row counter, you could be using a sticky note and a pen, whatever you want.

But if you do lose your place, that's a very easy way to keep track. And so, to finish this off, to finish this section off, we're going to repeat the eyelets until we have a total of the eight rows. So we've repeated rows 71 to 74 seven times, but then we're gonna finish it off by two rows of just knitting the stitches. The reason that I chose to do that is when you finish the last eyelet row here, you're left with one ridge here. But you can see over here where we finished our purl ridge and then started our eyelet and garter stitch is that it looks like we have two, 'cause we do.

We have two garter or purl ridges here. So I just wanted that to match on the other side. So once we've worked the garter stitch and eyelets, and this is in the pattern, then we're gonna just knit two more rows. And so once you've done that, we'll be ready to bind off, which I'll show you how to do in the next video. I think that's such a fun stitch pattern too.

I really enjoy knitting it. I love making those little eyelets, and the best part is we also made our buttonhole for the button that we need for our cowl. Now that our cowl knitting is complete, we're gonna be ready to bind off and finish it, which we're going to do in tomorrow's lesson. I'll see you then.