How to Knit: Bamboo Stitch

This is the bamboo stitch and this pattern, bamboo pattern rather, and basically the way we've got it set up is it's a multiple of two stitches. So I have ten stitches in the middle and then I have two stitches on both sides so I have a total of fourteen stitches on for this particular one. You can make it any size you want. In this case I'm using two stitches on both sides to create a garter stitch border and just makes it easier to hold on and maybe too sew to something else.

So the way we're going to work it is and it would go through we can find out exactly what we do. We have two stitches which will be our border. Now here is a thing you do, the thing that you do it's called Y/O you'll see it in patterns as y/o it means yarn over and basically what you're gonna do is you're gonna wrap the yarn around and go right over the needle like that. When you do that you're going to knit the next two stitches and that's actually going to give you three stitches normally so you've just increased by one. But in order to create the bamboo stitch what we do is, we go up that one that we did the yarn over so it's two stitches back. We put our needle underneath it and then we just slip it over the two stitches we just did. This is a little sloppy but the next one's will be okay. So you basically wrap those two stitches and you've created this bamboo pattern so I'm just going to do it again with a yarn over. We're going to knit one and two and then we're gonna take this stitch under here, bring it under and there you go now for people who have the Continental stitch down to the continental knitting this is pretty quick so you just get ready for continental. What you do is you do your yarn over and then you just knit two and then come right over here, slip it through. There you have your stitch. Yarn over, knit one, knit two. Slip that stitch right over the first two and there you go and then you have two more. Yarn over and I'm going to do it the old way just for people who don't have the Continental so I'm going to do yarn wrap over. Then you knit one and two and you know you have it right if you have three stitches now so it looks like three stitches from that last one and then just turn that into two by going and then we'll just finish the whole thing out by knitting the last two stitches for that border. There you go. Now next row we're going to knit the first two stitches because that's the Garter stitch or you need all stitches and then to set the bamboo stitch you're going to purl every single stitch. All ten stitches that you just had in the middle. There we go. How easy it is depends on your gauge and how tight you make your stitches and as you can see I make mine a little too tight sometimes so you're going to do all the way back until you get to the last two stitches in this case and then just knit the last 2 stitches off. You now have 2 rows 2 more rows of the bamboo stitch, and that's your bamboo stitch.