How to do the Tunisian Knit Stitch How to do the Tunisian Knit Stitch

I have published three Tunisian crochet patterns. Two of these feature the Tunisian Knit Stitch as opposed to Tunisian Simple Stitch. There are several wonderful tutorials already in existence for Tunisian simple stitch, but I thought I’d go ahead and make this quickie for the knit stitch (which is very similar, but still just a little special.) In addition to Tunisian Knit Stitch, I’m gonna show you how to do what I like to call “TKS2Tog,” which is a very simple decrease you can do on the forward pass. It’s pretty intuitive, but because I don’t think the abbreviation exists outside of my patterns, I thought I’d go ahead and cover the technique here.

How to do the Tunisian Knit Stitch

It’s really easy. All you need to do is take your hook (by the way, you should be using a long, Tunisian hook… you can sometimes get away with using a regular hook, as long as it doesn’t get too wide at the thumb grasp to move your stitches over, but a longer hook makes it easier to make bigger pieces) and insert it in through the middle of the stitches towards the back of the work on your forward pass.

Then pull up a loop.

You do this into every stitch across to the end. On the very last stitch, you pretty much just do a Tunisian simple stitch because going “through” the stitch ends up being going under the bar anyway.

TKS2Tog (How to Decrease in Tunisian Knit Stitch)

The only thing you have to do to decrease is to go into two stitches before drawing up a loop. However, it’s impossible to go through the first stitch to the back and then go through the second. So on the first stitch, you just go under the bar (as with Tss) and then you go through the next stitch to the back.

Then you draw your loop up through both of those stitches, creating a single loop out of two. Tada!

The Return Pass

This is just to remind you that on the return pass, you draw your first loop up through only one stitch…

And then you draw loops up two stitches at a time until you get to the end.

It’s also important to remember (for stitch counts and such) that the last loop on your hook after the return pass always counts as your first stitch for the next row.

A few more helpful hints (especially if you’re using my patterns.)

On Chaining at the Beginning

I’ve seen some websites say that you should chain 1 at the beginning of each row. This is lies. If you chain one at the beginning, you will have a really wonky right edge to your work. The edges in in Tunisian knit stitch tend to be wonky anyway, but they’ll be a total mess if you add all that extra chaining.

Other ways to Decrease (specifically at the beginning & end of rows)

In my patterns I also have you decrease at the beginning of rows by working slip stitches—you just insert your hook the same way as you would to create a TKS stitch, but you pull the loop all the way through to slip it.

You can also decrease multiple stitches at the end of a row by simply not completing your forward pass—just leave however many stitches you want left at the end, then work your return pass.

Working decreases like this at the beginning & end is similar to binding off stitches in knitting, or just slip/not working stitches in crochet. It’s really handy for underarm shaping, or for any time you need to abruptly lose a bunch of stitches.

And that’s it, a fairly straightforward technique that creates a very sturdy, knit-like fabric using a crochet hook. Huzzah!