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Now you have a completely finished stocking, except for there’s still a hole at the toe
that we need to close up.
And we’re going to graft that together using the kitchener stitch, which is a completely
invisible way of closing up the toe on stockings or socks or whatever else.
So let’s get started.
We’re still here on three needles. We need to get down to two needles, and our working
yarn is here at the beginning of our round.
So what we’re going to do is to knit these last six stitches on to this needle that we
were just working with, instead of incorporating a new needle, we’re going to use this same
needle.
And it’s a little bit awkward.
Okay.
Ta-da! We’re down to two needles. Exactly where we want to be.
So we’ll leave ourselves like an 18 inch tail and break the yarn, and I want you to
arrange this so that your stitches are all lined up one for one like this, and the stitch
with the working yarn is here in the back.
Take your tapestry needle, and thread your yarn.
And this is where it gets fun.
Kitchener stitch isn’t hard, it’s just a weird thing, because it’s not knitting.
[laughs]
So the first thing we do, we’re going to start with the first stitch on the front needle.
We’re going to put our tapestry needle in as if to knit, pull it through, and take that
stitch off the end of the needle.
Now the next stitch on the front needle, we go in as if to purl, and leave it there.
Switching to the back needle.
Go in as if to – whoops – go in as if to purl, and take that off.
Go in as if to knit, whoops, and leave that stitch on.
And you’ll see that things do get wrapped up.
Just make sure that you – if something gets wrapped around, just make sure that you unhook
it before you go on to the next one.
Okay.
Now the same sequence over again.
Front needle, in as if to knit, take that stitch off, in as if to purl, leave that on.
Back needle, in as if to purl, take that stitch off, in as if to knit, leave that stitch on.
And after that last stitch, I give it a tug, to tighten the whole thing up.
So this is what I say in my head as I go through these.
Knit, off, purl.
Purl, off, knit.
One more time.
Front needle – knit, off, purl.
Back needle – whoops, we just got caught up there.
Purl, off, knit.
Now you take a look and it is awesome. Kitchener stitch is awesome. It doesn’t leave a seam,
it completely duplicates the way the knit stitch goes, and it’s a great way to close
up the toe of a sock.
So you’re going to finish across the rest of these stitches, and when you’re done,
you will just poke the end to the inside of the sock, weave in the end and cut it short,
and then you have a finished stocking.
The last thing you may or may not want to do is to embroider a design on the outside,
and that’s the next technique we cover, is the duplicate stitch.
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