adding accidental increases. Please help!

[Chainleen]

Hi Everyone,

I'm new to knitting, very new! I just started on Monday because I decided I needed a more constructive hobby than computer games or just reading all the time.

Anyways,

I am using the website and several books and have decided to teach myself the contintental style because it feels more comfy and natural to me. I can cast on and knit the first row no problem but I somehow manage to increase my stiches by one stich for each subsequent row. I'm going to keep watching the knit and garter stich video's ( the garter stitch video shows amy going from one row to the next) and hope something clicks.

One thing i did notice is that for some reason my last stitch ends in a funny double loop where amy's doesn't. I keep practicing but am not sure what i'm doing to cause this, maybe wrapping the yarn around wrong? I've tried doing it differently... If anyone can help me on this I'd appreciate it. It would be nice to be able to make a square instead of cresents all the time!!

Thanks for your help!

[brendajos]

you need to make sure that if you are doing garter stitch (knit every row) that you are pulling your yarn under and behind the needle when you start the row. If it is up and behind it is giving you what looks like an extra stitch there on the needle. when you get to the end of your row, pull the yarn both ways so you can see the difference. under and behind is what you want. if you go up and behind it creates a "yarn over" which will increase your stitches.

[Hildegard_von_Knittin]

Yep, sometimes the first stich can actually look like 2 stiches if your working yarn is hanging the wrong way. This happened to me *all the time* when i was first learning! Here is a link to a site that has awesome explanations on this problem, and stitch and bitch has a good illustration of the right and wrong way. good luck!