Entrelac Knitting: How to Do a Reversible Pick Up

Entrelac knitting is exploding in popularity, with more and more patterns and projects being posted by the day. That’s why we’re thrilled to have Gwen Bortner—a true Entrelac expert—as a Craftsy knitting instructor. Her online Craftsy class, Entrelac Knitting, is an ideal way to learn the technique. With her easy and clear instruction, you’ll be knitting gorgeous Entrelac scarves, hats, and more! In this free video tip, Gwen answers one of the most common questions from knitters who want to learn Entrelac: how to do a reversible pick up. Check it out!

Hi, I’m Gwen Bortner and I’m an instructor at Craftsy. I want to take just a few minutes to show you how to do a reversible pick up. This is one of my most popular tips that I offer in many of my classes.

We start along the selvage edge, picking up like we normally would the first stitch. But before we do the second stitch we just place a yarn over. And then we pick up a stitch and we yarn over and we pick up a stitch, and we yarn over. And each time we pick up a stitch we place a yarn over. And so we’re going to pick up as many stitches as we normally would, plus a yarn over in between every one of them until we get to the last stitch. And I’m at the end, so, as I get to the last stitch I’m going to yarn over and then just pick up one last stitch.

So as I begin working the first row I’m going to purl because that is normally what I would do but I’m purling the last stitch I picked up together with its adjacent yarn over and I’m going to do that on every pair of stitches. A stitch and a yarn over together. A stitch and its yarn over together. I’m going to do that the whole way across the row until I get to the very last stitch because there will be no yarn over waiting for it. I’ll just purl it and then I’m going to continue knitting as if I normally would. And we’ll come back in just a second and show you what that looks like.

So as we’ve started working our fabric we can see this is our normal pick up edge and it’s nice and neat. But if we flip to the wrong side we can also see this pick up edge is nice and neat. Because the little pick up ridge we normally have has been encased. If you liked this tip check out my Entrelac class on Craftsy.com. I’ll look forward to seeing you there!

And if you’d like to turn your crafting passion into a profession, be sure to also check out Gwen’s Craftsy class How to Teach It!

In case you missed it, learn more about Gwen’s inspiration and teaching history here.