Knit Front and Back

Knitting a stitch twice, front and back, is a great simple increase in knitting

If you’ve run across KFB in a knitting pattern, you’ve been instructed to Knit one stitch, front and back. This is a simple method for increasing the number of stitches on your needles.

To work this skills, you are going to knit the next stitch as normal. Just don’t slip it off of your left hand needle. Take your right hand needle around to the back of your work.

Insert the needle through the back of the stitch. (If knitting a stitch normally knits the front half of the stitch, you’re now working with the opposite bar/side of that stitch.

I’ve included two videos on this skill below. The first video demonstrates this skill in garter stitch (knitting every row). In this demonstration, the increase is nearly invisible.

This second video demonstrates this skill in stockinette stitch. Below, you can see that a bar is created when you work this increase, making this increase slightly more visible.

Yet another option when given this instruction in a pattern is to KFSB or Knit Front, Slip Back.

This is a very similar stitch where you again complete the first part by knitting the stitch as normal. But instead of knitting the back bar of the stitch you simply slip that stitch onto the right hand needle. So you’re effectively knitting this stitch once but still ending up with two stitches (one existing and one new).