Okay, this is in place of the usual Monday WIP post. Because all I could show you was Uma looking about the same since I knit a few rows, tinked a few rows, and re knit a few rows. The rest is SECRET KNITTING. (Very ominous, I know.)
But I’m glad that I could take this break to talk to you about a delicate issue. Now, I firmly believe that there is no “wrong” way to knit. There are ways that don’t make any sense to me. A woman was Portugese knitting and wanted to learn continental. “No problem!” I blithely said, “I can show you that!” And then she showed me how she knit. And it was unicorn mystical magic. “What sorcery is this? I don’t know how to tell you how to knit continental because I can’t decipher what you’re doing!” But I didn’t think that she knit wrong. I just thought it was amazing and different than my own way.
But there are times in which a knitter is making stitches in an unusual way and they don’t realize that that the result is atypical. Now that’s a problem. Because if you don’t know what fabric you’re producing, then you don’t know how to compensate for it. So let’s talk about accidental twisted stitches or what I affectionately call semi-combination knitters.
For many knitters in this age, knitting is not something passed down from one to another with constant human guidance to steer one along. No, we’re in the sage of the self-made knitter. The knitter who might have been shown the ropes once or twice by a more experienced knitter, but was then left to fend to her (or his) own devices. And what does that new knitter do? Turn to the wealth of information out there on the internet or in a book. And sometimes things go sideways. Because when you don’t know exactly what the fabric you’re supposed to be making looks like, you might end up with a slightly different fabric.
It’s very easy for a new knitter to master the knit stitch and then try to reason out the purl stitch. And one alternate way of making a purl stitch is to yarn UNDER rather than yarn over. This Combination Purl stitch is wonderful. It’s fast, it uses less yarn, and it makes perfect sense when compared to a knit stitch. But it does something tricky that not everyone realizes. It twists the legs of the stitch, so when it’s time to work the next row, unless you compensate for it, you end up with… a twisted stitch!
Working this way, each purl row stitch is untwisted and each knit row is twisted. That gives you something that looks like this:
See how many of the knit stitches are making an “x”? It’s legs are crossed! This fabric is uneven and bumpy. The twisted stitches are cramped and the regular stitches are elongated. It can be tricky to find gauge if you knit a fabric is like this. And if you’re knitting a cardigan flat with sleeves in the round then you’ll find that your sleeves will all be stockinette, while the body of the sweater will be half-twisted half-regular. (There should be a name for this fabric! 1/2 Twisted Stockinette is what I’ll call it from here on out.)
I also find that you’re fighting every knit stitch because it’s too tight and the needle doesn’t want to go into the twisted stitch easily. If you find that you like purling more than knitting and find it odd that there are knitters that find ways to avoid purling, you might be doing Combination Purling.
The good news is that if you want to make straight stockinette, there’s a very easy solution. Instead of knitting in the front loop, you can simply knit in the back loop. That will right the stitches, and you’ll be Combination Knitting. Or you could yarn over instead of yarn under when purling. Then you’re Western Knitting (either Continental or English or some other variation that I don’t know of). If you do choose to change your knits, you have to keep in mind that there are other things that you will need to adjust, as most patterns are written for western knitting. But if you pick up Annie Modesitt’s book, she can help you navigate the waters.
There is, of course, more than one way of making a twisted stitch, but I wanted to highlight the above way, since it seems the most common way. In fact, I was an accidental 1/2 twisted stockinette knitter myself! It took me time to learn how knits and purls were created and how to read my knitting. Did you have trouble with twisted stitches?
Feenat
Sicily
