Mistake rib is a wonderful, simple pattern to have in your repertoire. It has all the cozy, squishiness of seed or fisherman's rib with the vertical lines and most of the elasticity of ribbing. It's wonderful for projects where you don't want to pay a lot of attention, but also don't want to be bored. The overall texture is a great one for when you want the yarn to do the talking or if you want something that can be masculine without being either boring or overly complicated. Oh, and it's also reversible.
I recently used a version of mistake rib for the lower part of my Fantasy Hood pattern. There was a little bit of confusion about it, because the written instructions looked like they are written for rows when that part of the pattern is worked in the round. If you aren't expecting a mistake rib, the confusion is reasonable. So, here's some information about mistake rib.
Mistake rib gets its name because it's what happens when you work 2x2 ribbing over an odd number of stitches (a multiple of 4 plus 1 works best). In other words, if you set out to do a 2x2 rib, which requires a multiple of 4 stitches, and accidentally cast on an extra stitch, you will wind up with mistake rib if you don't catch your cast on error. The extra stitch offsets your stitches such that you have a column of knit stitches, a column of alternating knit and purl stitches, a column of purl stitches, and another column of alternating knit and purl stitches. The two columns of alternating knit and purl stitches are also offset from each other, so that if you knit in one of the alternation columns, you will purl in the other. You can see it in the chart below:
If you work mistake rib in the round, it's really easy to wind up with a ribbed spiral (below), but you can also adjust your rounds to make sure you wind up with the correct pattern.
However, I find adjusting mistake rib to work in the round less than intuitive. Since I use mistake rib for mindless knitting, I want it to be really, really intuitive. So, when I want mistake rib in the round (like in the Fantasy Hood), I use this variation:
Over a multiple of 4,
- Rnd 1: (k 3, p 1) around
- Rnd 2: p 1, (k 1, p 3) around, ending p 2.
Traditional mistake rib (2x2 rib over an odd number of stitches) worked in rows is on the left. On the right is the variation I have charted below, worked in the round.
The difference between this pattern and traditional mistake rib is that the columns of alternating knit and purl stitches are NOT offset in this version the way they are in the other, as you can see in this chart:
The difference in appearance is pretty subtle, but you can see in the photo above that the column of knit stitches is more defined in this version than the first one I described.
So, without further ado, here is a free pattern for a mistake rib hat made in bulky yarn, with size 11 needles.
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