Knit Elongated Stitches

Incorporating elongated stitches into your knitting project is a fun technique, perfect for projects like shawls and scarves. In this video, Jill Wright demonstrates how to knit elongated stitches on a background of garter stitch.

An elongated stitch is worked in a similar manner to the knit stitch. Jill begins by inserting her right knitting needle into the stitch as if to knit. Instead of wrapping the yarn around the needle once to create a knit stitch, the yarn is wrapped around twice. The needle is pulled through the stitch and the new stitch is created. This new stitch has a double wrap on the needle. Jill works the knit stitches in this way all the way across the row. Every stitch has a double wrap, so it appears that the stitch count of the swatch has doubled. Jill notes that the extra wraps will be accounted for on the next row.

On the Wrong Side, Jill works the elongated stitches by knitting into them, and dropping the extra wrap. By dropping this extra yarn off the needle, a longer stitch is created. She works all the way across the Wrong Side row, dropping the extra wraps on the elongated stitches.

Elongated stitches can be made to be different lengths. The yarn can be wrapped around a stitch multiple times to create longer stitches. Jill provides an example by showing a swatch of wave stitch, which is created by making elongated stitches of different lengths.