Twisted: two more stitches
Note: this post is an errata to the post 4 stitches.
Before I wrote the aforementioned post, I had spent some time playing with needles and yarn, and I had convinced myself that there are only 4 stitches. But then, I bought a very nice reference book, that I highly recommend, "The principles of knitting" by June Hemmons Hiatt, an amazing tour-de-force of a book, that teaches almost everything there is to know about knitting (and when I say almost, I'm not giving the book enough credit, it is quite a challenge to find a technique that is not explained in it). I actually wouldn't need such a complete book to find out that I was wrong, but the thing is Hiatt doesn't just explain the how's, she also explains the why's. So her book is amazing in helping the reader make sense of things. In this case, it helped me realize that what I previously thought were two different ways of doing the same, namely making a twisted stitch, are actually ways of getting two different stitches, namely right- and left-slanted twisted stitches.
So here is the corrected statement to my previous post: there are 6 stitches you can knit. These are the knit stitch, the purl stitch, and 4 twisted stitches: right- and left-slanted twisted purl and knit stitches.
The thing that I missed when trying out stitches is that you can twist a stitch clockwise or counter-clockwise. On their own, the stitches you get when you do that are very similar looking, but, and this is a big but, they'll have a different effect on the fabric because twisted stitches would rather untwist. This means they pull the fabric in the direction that is opposite to the one they were twisted and therefore lend a bias to the fabric. This effect generates a right- or left-slanted fabric if you use only right- or left-slanted stitches (that is why I name them this way), but you can also use it to obtain nice effects like for example a zigzag pattern by alternating a certain number of left and right slanted rows.
The only question left is how do you do them?
Left-slanted twisted stitches are worked knitting or purling through the back loop. Right-slanted ones by slipping the stitch knitwise and bringing it back to the left needle before knitting or purling through the front loop.
So what happens if you slip one stitch knitwise, then bring it back to the left needle and knit it through the back loop, first you've twisted it to the right, then you've twisted it to the left, so in fact you have untwisted the stitch and got a regular knit stitch. This means that everything I said about decrease stitches on my "4 stitches" post is essentially correct.
In principle you can also twist stitches twice (or even more times) in the same direction, but why would you want to do that?
Before I wrote the aforementioned post, I had spent some time playing with needles and yarn, and I had convinced myself that there are only 4 stitches. But then, I bought a very nice reference book, that I highly recommend, "The principles of knitting" by June Hemmons Hiatt, an amazing tour-de-force of a book, that teaches almost everything there is to know about knitting (and when I say almost, I'm not giving the book enough credit, it is quite a challenge to find a technique that is not explained in it). I actually wouldn't need such a complete book to find out that I was wrong, but the thing is Hiatt doesn't just explain the how's, she also explains the why's. So her book is amazing in helping the reader make sense of things. In this case, it helped me realize that what I previously thought were two different ways of doing the same, namely making a twisted stitch, are actually ways of getting two different stitches, namely right- and left-slanted twisted stitches.
So here is the corrected statement to my previous post: there are 6 stitches you can knit. These are the knit stitch, the purl stitch, and 4 twisted stitches: right- and left-slanted twisted purl and knit stitches.
The thing that I missed when trying out stitches is that you can twist a stitch clockwise or counter-clockwise. On their own, the stitches you get when you do that are very similar looking, but, and this is a big but, they'll have a different effect on the fabric because twisted stitches would rather untwist. This means they pull the fabric in the direction that is opposite to the one they were twisted and therefore lend a bias to the fabric. This effect generates a right- or left-slanted fabric if you use only right- or left-slanted stitches (that is why I name them this way), but you can also use it to obtain nice effects like for example a zigzag pattern by alternating a certain number of left and right slanted rows.
The only question left is how do you do them?
Left-slanted twisted stitches are worked knitting or purling through the back loop. Right-slanted ones by slipping the stitch knitwise and bringing it back to the left needle before knitting or purling through the front loop.
So what happens if you slip one stitch knitwise, then bring it back to the left needle and knit it through the back loop, first you've twisted it to the right, then you've twisted it to the left, so in fact you have untwisted the stitch and got a regular knit stitch. This means that everything I said about decrease stitches on my "4 stitches" post is essentially correct.
In principle you can also twist stitches twice (or even more times) in the same direction, but why would you want to do that?
Comments
Post a Comment