Uneven Ribbing with DPNS in Knitting

Dear SweaterBabe,

I am knitting a sock on DPN's and my ribbing looks awful....Any tips or tricks to make it look neater would be great.....thanks

-- Kim

Dear Kim,

Yes - keeping your knitting even with DPN's and ribbing can be challenging.

One thing is to make sure you keep a firm tension on the yarn when you are ribbing the first 1-2 sts when you move to a new DPN.

What do I mean by a firm tension?  First, I hope that you are holding the yarn with some amount of tension in the hand that is controlling the yarn.  This would be the right hand if you are a right-handed knitter knitting in the English method. 

This is your natural knitting tension and it is controlled by some consistent way that you hold the yarn as it feeds from the ball and is used to create each new stitch.  Most knitters have the yarn woven through their fingers, often over their index finger, under their middle and ring finger, and either over their pinky or wrapped around their pinky.

Given that you have this natural tension when you normally knit, make it a little firmer by consciously pulling the yarn a little tighter for these first few stitches as you transition from one DPN to the next.  This will help the looseness that can often show between DPNs.

I suggest holding this firmer tension for a few stitches since it takes a few stitches to sort of "stabilize" your knitting on the new DPN, if that makes sense.

And for ribbing in general, the transitions between knit and purl stitches can cause some unevenness.  I believe this is a matter of maintaining your consistent knitting tension, so make sure you are very consistent in how you hold your yarn as you knit.

Hope that helps!

-- SweaterBabe