How to fix a dropped stitch

Secure the loose loop before you do anything else. Slide a stitch marker, safety pin, or spare needle through it so it can't run any further down. Then get a crochet hook roughly the same size as your needle and work the loop back up one rung at a time.

A dropped stitch that runs down twenty rows looks like a disaster and is a ten-minute repair. You do not need to rip anything out.

What you're looking at

When a stitch slips off the needle and unravels, you get one live loop at the bottom and a set of horizontal strands above it. Those strands are called the ladder, and each one is the row the stitch should have been part of. Your job is to pull the loop through each ladder rung, bottom to top, until it reaches the needle.

Fixing it in stockinette

1. 1Turn the work so the smooth knit side faces you. This matters — the repair is easier from the front.
2. 2Insert the crochet hook into the live loop from front to back.
3. 3Find the lowest ladder rung, the one directly above the loop.
4. 4Catch that rung with the hook and pull it through the loop toward you. The rung becomes the new stitch and the old loop drops off behind.
5. 5Repeat for each rung going up, always catching the next lowest one.
6. 6When you reach the top, slide the final loop onto the left needle, making sure its right leg sits in front.

Fixing it in garter stitch

Garter stitch alternates: each row's bump sits on the opposite side from the last. So the repair alternates too.

1. 1Pull the first rung through from the front, as in stockinette.
2. 2Turn the work over so the other side faces you.
3. 3Pull the next rung through from that side.
4. 4Keep flipping the work after every single rung until you reach the needle.

It feels fussy. It's the only way to get the ridges to line up with their neighbours.

Fixing it in ribbing

Same idea as garter, except the flipping depends on the column, not the row. A knit column gets worked from the front the whole way up. A purl column gets worked from the back the whole way up. Look at the stitches on either side of the gap to work out which column you're in.

When to rip back instead

• The dropped stitch is inside a cable or a lace repeat. Those columns cross and consume neighbouring stitches, so the ladder rungs don't line up one-to-one. Rip back to the row below the mistake.
• Two adjacent stitches dropped and their ladders tangled. You can sometimes rescue them by hooking both up in parallel, but ripping back is faster and cleaner.
• The yarn is mohair or another halo fibre. Repairs show badly and the fibre grabs itself. Rip back while the fabric is fresh.

Ripping back safely

Don't pull stitches off the needle and yank. Thread a spare circular needle or a length of smooth waste yarn through one leg of every stitch on a row below the mistake, then pull the yarn out down to that line. Your stitches are already on a holder and none of them can run.

This is called a lifeline, and on lace it's worth threading one in every ten rows before anything goes wrong.

Stopping it happening

• Use grippier needles. Bamboo and wood hold loose stitches that polished metal drops.
• Put point protectors on before the project goes in a bag.
• Stop mid-row less often. Stitches slip off during transport, not during knitting.