How to Tink Your Knitting: Easy Video Tutorial to...

Sometimes, you make a mistake in your knitting. You have some different options for how you deal with that. In both crochet and knitting, you can “frog” the work. However, you have an even better options sometimes with knitting. You can “tink” it. In other words, you can “un-knit” your work back to the point of the mistake and then begin again. Do you want to learn how to tink your knitting?

Want to learn how to knit from the ground up? Check out our Beginner Knitting lessons for Crocheters. They work for newbies to yarn as well.

Frogging vs. Tinking in Knitting

If you’re either a knitter or a crocheter, then you’ve likely heard the term “frogging.” It means that you “rip back” your work. In other words, you unravel your work. You might frog an entire work in progress because you decide that you don’t want to make it anymore.

Alternatively, you might see a mistake many rows back and frog back to that point. (Tip: put a stitch marker into the work where you want to stop frogging it so that you don’t go too far!)

Why is it called frogging? Because you “rip it, rip it, rip it” back. Which sounds like ribbit. A fun little fact.

Understanding When to Tink in Knitting

You can frog knitting. However, sometimes you don’t want to rip back all of that work. Instead, you just want to go back to the point where you’ve made a mistake. In crochet, that’s easy to do with frogging. After all, each loop is separate from the others in its row. However, in knitting, the loops in a row are all connected. Trying to rip back can cause some of them to drop off of the needle and make even more of a mistake.

Therefore, you might just want to tink. If you look at the word closely, you’ll see that it reads “knit” backwards. And that’s exactly what tinking is. You’ll knit backwards to the point where the mistake is. Or, more accurately, you will un-knit to that point.

So you can use frogging in both knitting and crochet to get back to a certain spot in the work. But if you want to carefully undo just a few stitches backwards, then you want to learn how to tink in knitting. Basically, if you want to undo some stitches, or even some rows, without removing your knitting needles from your work in progress, then your solution is tinking.

How to Tink in Knitting

Now you understand when you would use tinking, right? But how exactly do you do it? Well, let me show you:

Table of Contents

You might be surprised to learn just how easy tinking is. This video is just about five minutes long. Yet, it shows you what you need to know in order to learn this technique. It’s such a helpful way to deal with knitting mistakes.

Basics of Tinking: The Daughter and Mother Stitch

The first thing that you’ll see in this video is that you can stretch out your stitches just a little bit by pulling them down slightly. This allows you to see the separate stitches very easily. You’ll see the first stitch that’s on your needle. We call that the daughter.

Directly underneath it is the mother. When you tink, you insert your needle into the mother stitch. Why? Because we want to get the daughter off of the needle; that’s the one we are un-knitting. To do that, we need to go through the mother.

So, insert the left-hand needle into the mother stitch. Then let the daughter stitch just fall off the right hand needle. Now the mother stitch is back on the left hand needle where she belongs as we un-knit the work.

How To Tink Your Knitting and Your Purls

As you’ll also see in the video, you can tink knits and you can tink purls. And you know what? There’s no difference at all! So whether you’re working with knits or purls, which are our two basic foundation stitches in knitting, you do the exact same thing. So easy right?!

Frequently Asked Questions

What does “tinking” mean in knitting?

Tinking is “knit” spelled backwards… and it means unknitting one stitch at a time! Instead of ripping your work off the needles and frogging (ripping out many rows at once), tinking lets you carefully back up stitch by stitch to undo a mistake without losing control of your stitches. It’s slow but precise… you stay on the needle the whole time and undo only what needs to be undone. For fixing small mistakes a few stitches back, tinking is usually the right tool.

When should I tink vs. frog my knitting?

Tink when: the mistake is recent (1-5 stitches back), the stitch pattern is complex (lace, cables, colorwork where dropping stitches could cascade), or you’re working with slippery yarn that would be hard to pick up after ripping. Frog (rip it out) when: the mistake is many rows back and tinking would take forever, the yarn is forgiving and stitches are easy to pick up, or a lifeline is in place to catch your stitches safely. For lace and cables especially, tinking is almost always safer than frogging.

How do I tink a knit stitch?

Here’s the basic method step by step. With the working yarn at the back, insert your left needle into the stitch below the one on the right needle (from front to back). Slip the right needle out of the stitch. Pull the working yarn to undo the stitch… the loop now sits back on the left needle in its original position. Repeat for each stitch you need to undo. Go slowly… if you move too fast you can drop extra stitches or twist the ones you’re recovering.

How do I tink a purl stitch?

With the working yarn at the front, insert your left needle into the stitch below the one on the right needle (from back to front this time… the reverse of the knit tink). Slip the right needle out of the stitch. Pull the working yarn gently to undo the purl. The loop sits back on your left needle. This is slightly trickier than tinking a knit stitch because the yarn position is different, but with Marly’s video tutorial showing exactly what to do with your hands, it clicks quickly.

What about tinking cables or lace?

Cables and lace are where tinking really earns its keep! With cables, you need to track which stitches were twisted and restore them to the right orientation as you tink. Going slowly and referring to the chart for the row you’re undoing helps enormously. For lace, you’re mainly dealing with yarn overs (which were added stitches) and decreases (which removed stitches)… tinkling both of these requires care to restore the stitch count correctly. Marly’s video tutorial covers these specific scenarios. When in doubt: lifelines before complicated rows prevent needing to tink very far in the first place!

How to Tink Your Knitting: Easy Video Tutorial to…