Drama! I was happily knitting along on this pair of socks when I decided to change the rib pattern after starting the second sock. I made the executive decision to chop off the almost-completed first sock’s cuff, reknit the cuff in the new pattern, then graft the first sock back together again.

This was a bad idea on two counts. First, chopping off the cuff (well, snipping a stitch and unraveling a row to separate the two halves) was a pain in itself, because I ended up with way too few stitches on the needles! I was way off, by three or four stitches per DPN. I had to slowly unpick stitches for a couple of rows in order to get the correct stitch count. Then, I was left with the prospect of grafting in rib. The book I have gives instructions for 1×1 rib, and it was pretty difficult for me to extrapolate the instructions to my 2×2 rib.

I ended up knitting a rib swatch with a one-row stripe of a contrast color, and then figuring out the sequence of steps by following the path of the contrast strand. Hopefully these instructions will help someone in the same predicament!

Here’s how to graft 2×2 rib, where you chopped up your knitting so that one of the pieces is shifted by a half-stitch (ETA – this will also work if you provisionally cast one of the pieces). The normal 2×2 portion is the Lower instructions and the 1/2 stitch shifted portion is on the Upper. Start with the K2 part of the rib.

The stitch in parenthesis is the type of stitch on the needle. K-p denotes one of the half-shifted stitches in the Upper portion, although I wasn’t very consistent in labelling them in my notes. Always drop the first stitch in a pair.

(k) Lower – draw yarn through as if to K
(k) Lower – as if to P

(k) Upper – as if to P
(k) Upper – as if to K

(k) Lower – as if to K
(p) Lower – as if to K

(k) Upper – as if to K
(k-p) Upper – as if to P

(p) Lower – as if to P
(p) Lower – as if to K

(p) Upper – as if to K
(k) Upper – as if to P

(p) Lower – as if to P
(k) Lower – as if to P

(p-k) Upper – as if to P
(k) Upper – as if to K