How to Fix Laddering in Your Knitting

When knitters first start working in the round, there is a common problem that plagues many of us: laddering.

Laddering is a tension issue that most commonly happens in the spot where two knitting needles join. The more needles you are using in your knitting, the more likely you are to experience laddering. If left unchecked, laddering will create a spot in your knitting where there is a noticeable gap in your stitches.

In today’s blog post, we’ll look at what laddering is, what causes laddering, and how to fix it.

What is Laddering in Knitting?

Laddering is a spot in your knitting where the strand of yarn between two stitches becomes visible. As the issue persists over several rounds, these strand of strands of yarn become visible in the same spot. They stretch across a gap in your knitting and look like the rungs of a ladder. This is generally not desirable in your knitting from both an aesthetic and a functional point of view.

From an aesthetic point of view, laddering interrupts the visual flow of your stitches. If you are knitting plain stockinette, it will be a very visible line going up through your knitting. If you are knitting something with texture, you may end up with strange gaps between cables or bits of lace.

From a functional point of view, laddering can weaken your socks by altering the stitch density that makes them durable. It can also make them less comfortable to wear because some people can feel the change in tension against their feet.

What Causes Laddering?

Laddering is a tension issue. Unlike some tension issues in knitting, though, laddering has multiple potential causes. It can be caused both by stitches that are too tight and stitches that are too loose. A mismatch between needle size and yarn thickness might also be the culprit.

If a stitch is too tight, it will pull really hard on the previous stitch. That stretches it out and makes the back of that stitch visible, which can create a ladder. If the stitch is too loose, then the stitch itself will stretch out and again, the bit of laddering will be visible.

Sometimes, laddering also happens during the transition from a knit stitch to a purl stitch. When that happens, it’s usually because a knitter is working too far back on the needles or their purl stitch is significantly looser than their knit stitch.

Laddering almost never happens when moving from a purl stitch to a knit stitch. That’s because of where the yarn has to go while working the two stitches. When you transition from a knit stitch to a purl stitch, the yarn between the two stitches has to go across a larger amount of space. When you transition from a purl stitch to a knit stitch, the space that yarn has to travel is very small.

I also sometimes encounter laddering in one additional scenario: when the yarn is too fine for the needles I’m using. If your stitches feel unusually large or floppy to you, try going down a needle size.

How to Prevent Laddering

The first step in preventing laddering is to diagnose what’s causing it. That means the first step is to ask yourself whether the laddering is occurring at a spot where to needles join each other or whether the laddering is occurring in the middle of a needle.

If the laddering is occurring in the middle of the needle, you can pretty much bet that it’s caused by a stitch that’s too loose. Try tightening up the stitch to the left of the ladder for a few rounds and see if that decreases the tension issue. Make sure, too, to keep your stitches as close to the tips of your needles as you can.

If the laddering is happening where two needles join each other, then you’re going to have to experiment a bit. Try working a few rounds with loosening the first stitch after the ladder. If that doesn’t fix the laddering issue, try working a few rounds where you tighten the stitch after the ladder.

If you are consistently struggling with loose purl stitches, my blog post on rowing out has some tips for improving your purl stitch tension.

Quick Fixes for Laddering

Beyond trying to adjust your tension, here are a few other quick fixes that can help.

1. Don’t start a needle with a purl stitch. There are two reasons for this. First, there is more space to travel between stitches at the beginning and end of each needle tip. Second, there is also more space to travel between a knit stitch and a purl stitch. Combining the two frequently causes tension issues. Try to start new needles only with knit stitches so you don’t aggravate the situation.
2. Move stitches to different needles. This tip works best with DPNs. Some knitters find that knitting a few stitches from the next needle before switching to a new, empty needle to finish can help reduce laddering. Essentially, your work is spiraling around your needles, moving by a few stitches each time from one needle to the next. This reduces the amount of tugging and stretching at any single point.
3. Knit with purl-side in. Because of how purl stitches are made in some knitting styles, there can be a significant amount of yarn traveling between purl stitches. Knitting with the purls on the outside of your work only exacerbates that issue.
4. Maintain even stitch distribution. If you have 75% of your stitches on one needle and the rest on two others, this can cause tugging and pulling on your work at the ends of the more crowded needle. This is more likely to cause laddering. Keep your stitches evenly distributed across your needles if at all possible.
5. Block your knits. Very minor laddering can often be resolved with a good blocking. By that, I mean a soak in lukewarm water and laying flat to dry. If you are knitting with a natural fiber like wool or cotton, the water will help the fiber in your yarn bloom and settle into place. This can help smooth out tension issues, including laddering.

Laddering’s Cousin: A Ridge of Tight Stitches

There is another tension issue related to laddering that I have noticed in my own knitting but I have not seen a name for yet. It’s where a tight knitter uses a stitch method like magic loop where laddering happens frequently, and out of fear of laddering, they tighten up their stitches at the beginning and end of each row too much. This results in visibly prominent ridges down the side of the project.

The solution to this problem is pretty obvious. Just loosen up a little bit on the first couple stitches and last couple stitches of each needle. Again, you may need to experiment a little bit so that you don’t go too far in the opposite direction and end up with loose stitches that lead to laddering.

One final tip I have found that helps avoid laddering when I am using techniques like magic loop is to pinch the back of my work and the front of my work together while I knit the first couple stitches. When I do that, it helps make sure that the strand of yarn between the last stitch on the previous needle and the first stitch on the current needle does not get stretched out any more than necessary.

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