Creative Knitting – Beyond Knit and Purl

While double knitting the toe and heel on my Nordic Rose stockings, I decided to try holding the yarns in one hand.  Why?  Because, all methods so far, have always yielded an occasional uneven stitch.  I don’t like that. 😦    There are  instructions on the net for holding the yarns separated on one hand, but for me it was very awkward.

After thinking about this problem for a while, I started really paying attention to how the yarns lay in my right hand, and I discovered that if I made sure that my main color(black) for the knit stitch was to the left of the alternate color on my right index finger(or on top), I was able to move right along, smooth transitioning from knit to purl, while maintaining an even stitch tension.

Below are some photos of the process I used.

In the photo above I have just slipped the knit and purl of the short row of my heel, and am preparing to work on the right side row.

Since black is my main color, I made sure when I picked up the yarns with my right hand that black was to the left of the red, or on top.

You can see in this photo that I am picking off the black for the first stitch.

Now that the knit stitch is completed, both yarns have been moved to the front in preparation for the purl stitch in red.

To pick off the red yarn to complete the purl stitch, the right needle tip passed between the two yarns, as my right hand move to the left to wrap it on the needle to complete the purl stitch.

The purl stitch is now completed.  Once done, both yarn are moved to the back, between the needles.

Also- I decided rather than working with the balls of yarn in each pocket of my stranded knitting bag (see free pattern page for upload), I opted for single strands about 2 yards long.  Why?  It makes it easier to refresh your yarn position in the right hand (English), or left(Continental).

When your strands are not attached to their respective balls, they get less tangled, and it only takes a few seconds to pull out a single strand to straighten everything out.  Then the strands get down to about a foot left, I simply “spit” splice on another addition.

*Note- the one thing I noticed when using the “one handed” method is that you need to make sure that the yarn from your knit stitch (MC) is laying over the purl yarn when they are swung to the back in preparation for another set of stitches. If not, then you caught the MC when you attempted the purl stitch.  The solution-take it out and do it over.  I have done this many times.  Now I quickly glance at the yarn position before I move on.

Hope this is of some help.

KT

PS-thought I would upload the photo of my results.

Quite often when knitting double knitting with two hands, every other row is tighter, resulting in ridges in your knitting.  To me, the method above seems to bring a much better result.