The linen stitch is a fairly simple stitch; you alternate wrapped stitches over slip stitches. The final appearance of the linen stitch resembles a woven look with the tight linen stitches creating a sturdy, dense fabric. The linen stitch can often be used in sock, bag, and hot plate patterns.
Our resident knitter, Alan demonstrates how to knit the linen stitch with a garter stitch border. To create a 6" x 6" linen stitch square, Alan knits 2 garter stitches (for the border) and 21 linen stitches across. A written pattern to follow is provided below.
So we’re gonna get started on the linen stitch. So the first thing you want to do is to knit two stitches. So I'm going to go one and two and that's gonna give us our border, our garter border. Okay now here's how we start we do a - whatever you're doing the linen stitch with you always want to have an odd number of stitches. So basically I have as I said 25, so 21 stitches that I'm actually going to be a part of the linen stitch. So the first stitch is a knit stitch and you just knit, and then you take your yarn and you bring it forward like you're gonna do a purl all right, and then you slip it. That's it, so you bring it back, do a knit, bring it back to a purl side as if you were going to purl and then slip it. So we knit one, and then we bring the yarn around to the front as if to purl but not purl, and then do a slip and then bring it back around and do a knit stitch and bring it back around as if to purl. You'll see that in the instructions if you're looking at a pattern, somewhere they'll usually say with yarn in front or with yarn in back. So you'll see WIB or I F. So that's what that means with yarn in front or yarn in back.
So we have knit purl knit purl so we have yarn in back and we do a knit stitch, yarn in front, a slip yarn in back. You're gonna finish up with a knit stitch so you just want to know whenever you're doing this, if you don't do a border that's fine too okay but just remember you're going to start with a knit stitch and you're going to end with a knit stitch. That's why you do the odd number of things so we're gonna finish by just knitting the last two stitches which is going to give us our border, and then we're gonna flip it around. Now this is the as you can see, this is the linen side or the knit side. It looks like almost a woven stitch like it's happened it's been woven on a loom. It has that real nice feel to it too. This is what it looks like on the other side. I've actually used a stitch like this in making socks making the heel of socks because it gives kind of a thickness which is nice. So you could make a scarf you could do I made a belt one time a woven what looked like a woven belt.
So I'm gonna get my border again by knitting two stitches now here's where we get this side the purl side the other side is a purl so but the first thing you're going to do is you're gonna slip so the first stitch of the linen stitch is to slip a stitch. Then bring your yarn around as if to purl and this time you do purl. Bring it back forward again and do it a slip. Bring it back, and do a purl. Bring it forward do a slip, bring it back and do a purl. As you can see, you get a pretty interesting stitch that way so I'm just going to keep doing this.
Written Pattern:
Row 1: Knit 1 *Slip with yarn in front, Knit 1; Repeat from * to end.
Row 2: Purl 1 * Slip with yarn in back, Purl 1; Repeat from * to end.
Repeat rows 1 + 2 to desired length.
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