How do you increase a rib stitch?

[jruby18]

I'm doing a pattern of K2P2 on round needles. How do I increase the stitches? TIA

[Ingrid]

Are you at the point where you're going to start working a stockinette stitch body? If that's the case, just increase evenly spaced and you won't see the increases as you switch to st st.

If you can increase on the edge, then just increase in the last stitch and incorporate those increases into the rib pattern on the next row. It will look like the ribbing grows out of the seam.

Do either of these sound like your project?

[jruby18]

The pattern is for a skirt and it's supposed to be just a tube of ribbing. But I think I need a little more "room" around the hip area, so I wanted to increase it at some point.

[janelanespaintbrush]

Ribbing is stretchy by nature, so I think the idea is that it should be able to accommodate your curves. To make sure it'll work, how about trying this -- when you swatch, measure your gauge when relaxed, and measure again while stretched. If the relaxed-to-stretched ratio is lower than your waist-to-hip ratio, you should be okay. (Someone please confirm this. I think that's right.)

If that doesn't work, I know I've seen directions on how to increase while in ribbing, but I can't for the life of me find them now. It was probably in one of the books I borrowed from the library and has since been returned... I think the result was kind of weird looking, though. Like you ended up with little Y's branching out where one rib separated and divided into two, if that makes sense. I suppose if you did four of them strategically like darts it would be okay. Hopefully you won't need to worry about it, though.

[suzeeq]

Waaaaaaayyy back when I was in college, I knit a ribbed miniskirt, but it was flared a little, and had a waistband casing with elastic through it. Anyway, it started out something like k4, p2 and the increases were done on the purl sts I think, so the purl rib just widened out gradually.

sue