Spoiler: This is not a story that will teach you how to pick up a dropped stitch. There are plenty of really good YouTube videos for that. This is a story about me learning how to pick up a dropped stitch.
I learned to knit from a booklet like this, decades ago. My mother taught herself, and then helped me. We did not have anyone to mentor us like many knitters do. We did not have internet or even a knitting group to help. We figured things out pretty well, but there have definitely been gaps in my skills. It wasn’t until Covid and my participation in knitting zooms that I started to fill in these gaps.
A dropped stitch occurs when one stitch, for some reason, gets slipped off the needle without being knit. Over time, it continues to unravel, leaving a loose ladder structure down the piece. If it’s not dealt with, it will continue to slip down the work. I never even knew you could fix them so I often unknit or pulled out rows until I got down to the place where I could pick up the runaway loops. If I found it after the hat or scarf was done, I just tied it to a yarn piece and made a knot. This, of course, was not pretty.
And then a weird thing happened. I was knitting a raglan sleeve sweater out of some hand-spun yarn. I was at the easy part, knitting the body on circular needles. It was mindless knitting, perfect for a zoom session. The group I was knitting with has also been working on some dishcloths using sequence knitting. One pattern, with variations, is released each month. So I was alternating between knitting the dishcloth, K3P3, and knitting the sweater, KKKKKKKKK. Of course you know what happened. I accidentally started knitting the K3P3 on the sweater. I didn’t even know I had added 9 purl stitches until I saw them 3 rows later. They were in the back, half way down. I decided to just leave them as the yarn is a little uneven and the sweater is for me.
I was sharing the funny story with the knitters in my group. I thought the only two options were to leave it or unknit three rows. The knitters assured me I could fix them as you would fix a dropped stitch. So, I knit this little sample with a purl bump. I got to the correct place in the row and let a stitch drop. I worked it down, carefully, until I reached the error. After watching several videos, I used a cable needle to work the stitch back up. It really was pretty easy and straight forward.
After having tried it on the sample, I marked the spot of the stitch on my sweater, carefully slipped the stitch and worked it down to the error, then reknit it back up to the current row. I repeated it for all nine stitches. It was nerve wracking but I did it!
In the end, you can’t even tell there was a mistake. I can’t believe it took me so long to learn this skill. It really does show how important knitting mentors can be.
I hope this story encourages you to ask for help and learn new things. As always, your polite and helpful comments are welcome.
Knitting, Weaving, Writing 
Amazing. Knitters. Love this story because it applies to so many things we learn. Learning on our own can work for a while and then there can be large leaps in the presence of mentors. Great story, though I only understood the words knit and bump. 😊
I knew how to fix a dropped stitch, but in the last month I just learned how to fix a cable that accidentally gets knit the wrong way. Same process, dropping stitches down then knitting them back up. It’s scarier than doing just one stitch, but it saves so much time!