Picking up and knitting stitches is a helpful technique to adapt knits you’ve already bound off. It can be use to add shape (for instance with our Christmas Stockings) as well as adding a trim like a neckline or sleeves.
Essentially you’re inserting your needle into an existing stitch and then treating that as a new stitch…You need to put your needle into the knitting from the front through to the back – either on the cast off edge or between two stitches depending on the pattern – wrap your yarn around, like you would with a normal knit stitch and bring the needle through, again as you would with a normal stitch. (have you noticed that everything in knitting sounds scarier that it really is? Once you get the hang of it – it’s simple really 😀 )
Everything below where you insert your needle will show on the right side of your knitting and (theoretically) everything above will be at the back of the knitting. So when you insert your needle make sure you’re going in a straight line and following an adjacent row of stitches to keep it even.