Mosaic Graft Prep - Stitch Orientation

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This tutorial was written for my Convergence Hats collection, yet it'll be useful for anywhere where mosaic slipped stitch knitting sits one row in from a provisional cast-on.

When we’re preparing to graft mosaic knitting, in particular mosaic knitting patterns where slipped stitches occur in the 2nd row after the provisional cast-on, we want to take care to ensure that the released stitches are orientated correctly to ensure that the graft works and the stitch pattern lines up.

1) When we release stitches that have a slipped stitch in the 2nd row after a provisional cast-on, we’ll see this weird stitch on one side of where the slip stitch occurs. Usually we would expect to see the first leg of the stitch to be anchored at the front and the 2nd leg anchored at the back, and the whole stitch would be left leaning. Here, these stitches have their legs reversed – the first leg is anchored at the back and the 2nd leg is anchored at the front – and so the stitch leans to the right. If we graft with the stitch like this the pattern won’t line up and the graft will be noticeable.

2) What we want to do is ensure that all of the stitches lean the same way, that they all lean to the left. To achieve this for these stitches we want to give them one half twist to the right. This means that the first leg of the stitch, which is anchored at the back, comes under the needle and up the front of it, and the 2nd leg of the stitch, which is anchored at the front, goes underneath the needle to the back. This may seem like an odd way to orientate a stitch but it does ensure that the pattern remains continuous.

Where there are more plain rows between the slipped stitches and the provisional cast-on, this preparation isn’t needed. The reason this odd stitch occurs is because of the half stitch jog between the released provisional stitches and the last row of stitches worked, and this really is the quickest way to fix it for the most common method of grafting.

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