It’s Okay to Tink—Really!

May 21, 2025

We all make mistakes in our knitting, and that’s perfectly normal. Sometimes the error is so minor it barely affects the overall look of the project. In those cases, we simply carry on, call it a design feature, and keep knitting.

But other times? The mistake stands out like a dropped stitch on a garter row. It might throw off your pattern, affect other stitches in the next row, or even ripple down several rows. That’s when it’s time to tink.

Tinking—undoing your knitting stitch by stitch—might sound tedious, but it’s actually a wonderful teacher. It helps you see how your stitches work, how they fit together, and what happens when something goes wrong (or right). The more you do it, the more confident you become.

Soon, you'll know when to tink stitch by stitch, when to drop a stitch down a column to fix an error, and when to boldly take your knitting off the needles and unravel several rows in one go.

And here’s the best part: the more comfortable you get with tinking, the quicker you can fix mistakes—and the braver you become with new, more complicated patterns.

Tinking is empowering. It means you’re not afraid to learn, to experiment, or to try again.

So don’t worry—really. It’s okay to tink.