Hel­lo friends! We’re back again with our mitered square blan­ket! Today we’re going to join the first square on the sec­ond row, and the method for join­ing is the same for the first square in every row. 

Let’s first ori­ent our­selves. For the first square in every row, we will always be join­ing under the first square in the pre­vi­ous row. In our case, it’s the pur­ple square (in the last post we joined the yel­low square). 

We will place the loops on the bot­tom edge of the pur­ple square (as indi­cat­ed by the red dots) onto the pegs on the loom that are marked by the red dot, start­ing at the first peg (the one that’s beside the side knob) and end­ing at the peg marked with a stitch mark­er, or the one just before it. So you will put on 11 or 12 loops, it does­n’t make a difference.

To place the loops on the square onto the pegs, find the hor­i­zon­tal strands between the purl bumps, and place the strands onto the pegs.

When actu­al­ly joining/knitting the square, you would posi­tion it like this, with the right side of the square you’re join­ing to fac­ing the inside of the loop, and pick­ing up the loops on the side this way. (And yes that was a won­der­ful day knit­ting in the sun sit­ting on the grass in a park! :D)

Once the loops are placed onto the peg, make a slip knot with the new yarn (in this demon­stra­tion it’s the blue yarn), place it on the first peg, and knit over with the loop on the peg.

E‑wrap the next peg, then knit over. Repeat until there are no loops on the next pegs. Then, e‑wrap the next loop twice and knit off the bot­tom loop (in this demon­stra­tion it is the marked peg, but it can also be the peg after the marked peg if you have placed a loop from the pre­vi­ous square on the marked peg, it does­n’t real­ly make a dif­fer­ence), there­by cast­ing on a stitch.

Con­tin­ue cast­ing on until the sec­ond last peg on the loom — that will be the last stitch, 23 stitch­es altogether.

You’re now ready to con­tin­ue mak­ing the square as usu­al. Instruc­tions are past­ed below for con­ve­nience’s sake but if you need more help there are pho­tos in the first post.

Row 1: Purl (here’s a video of purl­ing) to the marked peg, e‑wrap knit the marked peg, purl to end. (Note in the pic­ture that the last peg of the loom is emp­ty — we only use 23 pegs of the loom.) Beware not to make the stitch­es too tight.

Row 2: Move the loop on the peg to the left of the marked peg onto the marked peg. Move the loop on the peg to the right of the marked peg onto the marked peg. Now the marked peg has 3 loops on it. (Always move the loop on the left first, then the one on the right, so it looks consistent.) 

Move the loop on the peg to the left of the now emp­ty peg onto the emp­ty peg. Keep mov­ing each loop to the emp­ty peg to the right until you reach the begin­ning of the row.

E‑wrap and knit off each peg until you reach the marked peg. E‑wrap the marked peg, knit off all three bot­tom loops on the peg (I pre­fer knit­ting them off one at a time, it’s easier).

You will now have an emp­ty peg to the right of the marked peg. Move the loop on the peg to the right of the emp­ty peg onto the emp­ty peg, e‑wrap the peg and knit off. Then keep mov­ing each loop to the emp­ty peg to the left and e‑wrap and knit off until you reach the end of row. I find it eas­i­er to do this with the loom sit­ting flat on a surface.

Repeat rows 1 and 2 until you have 3 stitch­es left. Purl the 3 stitch­es. Place the stitch on the left and stitch on the right onto the mid­dle peg, e‑wrap, then knit off all 3 bot­tom loops. Fas­ten off.

Now we have the first square of the row joined! Next time we’ll join the next square, which is how we make the major­i­ty of the squares in the blanket.

Be sure to leave a com­ment on the post if you have any ques­tion! You can send me an email too but oth­er read­ers may also find your ques­tions help­ful so don’t be shy :)

Hap­py weekend!

 

Posts in this series:

How to make the first square

How to join the sub­se­quent squares in the first row

How to join the first square in every row

How to join all the oth­er squares

How to make striped squares