Llearning with Llamas: Stacked Increases

Last week I debuted the second pattern to be born of my torrid love affair with cotton yarn: The Never Never Socks. The socks are a part of our Dresden Files Knit and Read Summer Binge, and you can read all about them here.

Today I’m going to walk you through the stacked increase technique that I use in the socks. Next week I’ll have a llama-llesson ready to go on stacked decreases, and you’ll be all set to knit the cuff and instep of my ectoplasm inspired socks, or any other stacked stitches pattern. If you love the technique, do yourself a favor and check out some of Xandy Peter’s work! She is the stacked stitch guru, and invented the technique.

Stacked Increases

Basically, stacked increases are bobbles that went rogue. This bobble is a lone wolf. It doesn’t take orders from anyone!* They are worked in a technique rather similar to working a bobble. We’ll make them by increasing several stitches into a single stitch. For this tutorial, I’m increasing 8 stitches so that where there was 1 stitch, there will now be 9. In one row I’ll go from 20 stitches to 60 stitches, and create 5 stacks. That creates really cool peaks and valleys in your knitting and is a great way to add texture and movement to knitting. For my socks I used stacked increases followed by stacked decreases to make the ectoplasm ruffles at the cuff and instep. Here is what it looks like when you work a row of stacked increases and bind off:

Let’s get stacking! If you want to knit along with my video, get started by casting on 20 stitches, and knitting a few rounds.

1. When indicated in the pattern you will increase several sts into a single stitch using 2 specific techniques:
   • KyoK: Knit, yarn over, Knit into the same st to increase 1 st into 2 sts. Knit into the stitch as usual, but do not slip it off the needle. Yarn over, then knit into the stitch again, this time slipping it off of the needle. 2 sts increased.
   • S2B: Slip 2 back: WITHOUT turning your work, slip the last 2 sts worked back onto the left needle to be worked again, leaving 1 K on your right needle, and slipping the YO and the 2^nd K to the left needle.
2. Stacked increases work by working first a KyoK, then an S2B and repeating the number of times indicated in the pattern. Them more repeats you work, the taller your “stack” of sts will be. On the final repeat of KyoK you will NOT work an S2B, and this is indicated in the pattern.
3. You should have a symmetrical stack of sts, with the YO from the final KyoK at the peak, and an equal number of Ks on either side of it. K across the 2^nd side of the stack until you reach the st that was originally on your needle right after the first st you increased into.

I hope you enjoy working these as much as I do! I’ll be back again next week with a fresh tutorial on stacked decreases, and if you missed it, I added one last week on managing cotton ends. Hope to see you over at book club (recently moved to Fridays), where I’ll be releasing the Never Never Socks over the course of the rest of my Dresden Files re-read leading up to the new book!

~Megan-Anne

*Except you, the knitter. This bobble-ish stack will take orders from you.