Monday, January 19, 2009

Double Knitting is slooooow

Lost is coming back on January 21st, so to celebrate that fact (yes, I love my tv show :-) I decided to knit at least one of the Dharma stations from Irina's awesome Orientation scarf. It's double knitting, something I've never done before, but I figured it can't be that hard, and besides, it's Lost. I'm so excited about that show that I should probably have my head examined.

Anyway - double knitting. I
t is hard. And it's slow. Really slow. Sloooooooooooooooooowww. It took me forever to figure out how to do it. I frogged at least three times. And when it seemed to be going fine, I realized I've cast on the wrong number of stitches. Now, when it comes to knitting, I'm willing to make some compromises, but frogging the same thing more than 3 times - no, sir. So I left it like it was, and made peace with the fact that my image will be slightly off center. I really thought I got the jist of it, and it went fine until I reached the chart. After couple of rows it turned out that I was doing it completely wrong. Imagine my happiness when faced with the possibility of frogging. Again, I left it like it is. Why should my potholder be perfect? I'm not.

I think I'm doing it right now. See on the picture, where there is a sort of break in the black outline of the Dharma logo? I call that the mistake line. Everything under it is where I used the wrong techniq
ue - always working the same colors together, and mixing up the k,p order. That is wrong,. Wrong, wrong, wrong, no matter how logical it seemed at the time. Wrong.



You're supposed to knit in the same order always - first knit, then purl. K,P,K,P and so on. Think of stitches in pairs - a double knit stitch is not complete until you've knit one and purled another.
When your chart tells you to change colors - you knit with the color that's next in the chart - it's okay if you're knitting with black yarn into a white stitch. That's what you're supposed to do. Then just purl the following stitch with the white yarn and you're golden.

When purling - always hold BOTH yarns in front, also when knitting - BOTH yarns are in the back.
Oh, and super important - make sure your yarns don't get so tangled up that you have to use scissors to separate them. See the black tails coming out of the front of my potholder? I have no idea how I'm going to weave those in. All because of a bad tangle.

Here are a few tutorials for double knitting:

KnittingHelp
Craftster
Stitch Diva

5 comments:

  1. Well, after this post of yours, double knitting is not something I am going to try, despite occasional bouts of masochism that I am prone to :) I like the effect, though.

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  2. I can't wait for Lost either, and I'm quite impressed by your knitting!

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  3. Hehe, it is slow, isn't it? I never used it for colour-work but I learned how to make double- edgings for sleeves and necks using this method from my Mom and I usually can't wait to finish these 10 or so rows!

    (Oh, O'm so not a TV type- now I have ask my friend Google about Lost! :)) )

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  4. Volela bih da probam! Naravno, samo manji komadi dolaze u obzir:)!

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  5. You don't weave in the ends of double knitting. Just hide them between your double layers. Quick, easy way of getting rid of them, and one of the main reasons to use double knitting in the first place.

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