There's nothing difficult about increasing a single stitch. All you have to do is bring another needle into working position (B position) level with the needles which are already in work. Stitches can be increased in this way at one, or both sides of the work (and the carriage doesn't have to be at the side you are adding onto). Continue knitting, the new stitch will be made automatically as the next row is knitted. This is fine for increases that do not show (such as sleeve seams) but be warned it does leave a little loop at the seam line, which you are going to avoid when you sew the garment together, right?. Don't try to bring up two needles together as you can only do this to increase one stitch at a time. (Of, course, all this assumes that you have managed to cast on and knit!)
If you need to increase two or more stitches at the side of the work, you can't use the single stitch increase, you have to push the required number of needles to D position (hold). You have to do this at the side that the carriage is at, as you need to wrap the yarn around the needles. If the carriage is on the right side, you wrap anti-clockwise (fairly loosely, not tight). It looks like a row of eeeeeeee's, hence the name 'e' wrap. If the carriage is on the left side, wrap clockwise. Tug the yarn down behind the mast to take out all the slack, otherwise you'll have a 'jam' or loop at the beginning of the row. Don't push the needles back down, just carefully knit the row and they will knit down to 'B' position. If you have problems knitting the 2nd row over these new stitches you can always put the needles to 'B' again. As soon as you can put claw weights under the increase area. (In other words, you need a row or two in order to give the claw weights something to bite into and also to put them low enough so they won't clash with the carriage as it goes by).
If you would like to do a little fancier increasing you can do what is called fully fashioned increasing. Using the 3-eyelet tool, 3 stitches are picked up with this tool and moved outwards by 1 needle, which leaves a needle empty. Then using the single eyelet tool you pick up the heel thread at base of the 3rd stitch and put it onto the empty needle which fills in the hole. There are lots of variations on this, but this is the simplest. You can, obviously, use the two prong eyelet tool if you wish.
Copyright©rvk Feb. 1999