You will inevitably one day find that a few stitches have slipped off the points of your needles, or that you have accidentally pulled all your stitches off the needle. It's pretty terrifying picking up stitches the first few times but it really is quite easy provided you take your time.

First of all you can prevent the problem of losing a few stitches off the points of your needle by a couple of simple methods. I usually push my stitches well back from the needle point at the end of a row or if doing circular knitting I push the stitches well back from both points when I put my knitting aside. Point protectors can be bought from knitting shops and you slip these onto the points of your needles to prevent stitches slipping off when you have put the knitting to one side. If you can't find point protectors, you can use elastic bands instead. Just be sure not to leave them on the needles for too long because elastic bands can rot and stick to the needle.

If all of your stitches have been pulled off the needle, first of all take a deep breath and look at your knitting. The chances are that if any stitches have dropped it's just by a row or two and you may find part of the last row has unravelled anyway. However I have never found stitches to drop more than a couple of rows in this scenario and it's usually perfectly possible to slip the point of one needle through each stitch on the row, being sure that the right hand side of the stitch is at the front of the needle and being careful not to split the yarn of the stitches. You then have two choices: you can unpick the work stitch by stitch back to the point at which it is OK, or you can work along the row you have just picked up. In any case, the first thing to do is to check the stitches are all the correct way round on the needle so that they are not twisted when you knit the next row. Then when you re-knit the row you can pick up any dropped stitches as you go.

I like to pick up my dropped stitches using the points of my needles. If the stitch is knit, insert the point of the left hand needle through the front of the stitch. Pick up the bar of yarn above the dropped stitch that you want to re-knit and hold it just behind the stitch you have just picked up. Use the right hand needle point to pick up the dropped stitch by slipping the point through the stitch (not the pickup bar) as if to purl, and lift the stitch over the loose bar. You can do this as many times as needed and it also works well if you use a crochet hook, especially if you have a stitch which has dropped several rows down. A purl stitch is picked up in exactly the same way except that you put it on the right hand needle, hold the bar of yarn in front of it and lift the stitch over so that it forms a purl bump.

Another situation I occasionally encounter is an unnoticed dropped stitch several rows down. I find that in plain knitting it is very rarely necessary to undo and reknit a whole section. Instead I use a separate length of yarn to hold this stitch till I'm ready to sew up then I darn the ends in (obviously this length of yarn should match the knitting). This is practically unnoticeable. If you really feel it's essential you can increase by working to the point where the stitch has dropped and knitting into the stitch below the stitch on the left hand needle, just as normal, then knit the next stitch as usual. Obviously in pattern knitting you would probably be using lifelines for anything complicated and would notice an error such as a dropped stitch very quickly in most circumstances.

Occasionally it's necessary to unknit a row stitch by stitch and again this is easy, though time consuming, to do. Slip the point of the left hand needle from the front of the work through the loop below the stitch just knitted onto the right hand needle. If this is a purl stitch you can do several stitches at a time and pull the yarn that has been unknitted back as necessary. If you are undoing knit stitches, you will need to undo the work one stitch at a time.

These are just a few of the situations which arise in undoing mistakes and I am sure you will have plenty of ideas on the subject yourselves. Do feel free to post in the forum and discuss your methods!