let me explaiKnit

Coming around again

Way back when I started this blog, I began by talking about yarnovers. And although I explained then how to do a correct YO for any of the four possible combinations of leading and following stitches, there's an aspect that I left out, so I thought I'd come back and cover it.

In most cases, all YOs are done so that the resulting loop sits in Western orientation, with its right leg in front of the needle. There is a circumstance, however, in which this is not wholly desirable. That circumstance is when a pattern contains pairs of YOs that are intended to be symmetrical, but one YO is preceded by a purl and followed by a knit, while the other is preceded by a knit and followed by a purl. (For purposes of this discussion, I am lumping decreases worked with the yarn in back in with knits, and those worked with yarn in front in with purls.)

In the case of the k-YO-p combination, the knit stitch ends with the yarn in back of the work. It's then taken under the needle to prepare for the YO, over the right needle to form the YO, and under the needle a second time to prepare for the following purl. Of all the YO combinations, this one uses the most yarn, as the yarn makes about 1-1/4 circuits of the needle.

In the case of the p-YO-k combination, by contrast, the purl stitch ends with the yarn already in front, so it's simply taken over the top of the right needle to form the YO, and then it's already in the proper position to form the following knit. This is the shortest of the YO combinations, with the yarn making only about 3/4ths of a circuit of the needle.

The difficulty is apparent: the k-YO-p combination puts quite a bit more yarn into its YO than the p-YO-k combination does, with the result that the hole it forms is perceptibly larger.

The potential solutions are twofold: make the big hole smaller, or make the small hole bigger. In either case, this is done by wrapping one of the YOs in the opposite direction, so that the resulting stitch uses the same amount of yarn as its counterpart. Which you choose to alter is an aesthetic choice for you as the knitter.

If you choose to make small holes, you will wish to alter the k-YO-p combination. After finishing the knit stitch, you will bring the yarn from back to front over the top of the right needle, and then proceed with the purl stitch. Work the p-YO-k combination as you usually would. Both YOs pass over the top of the needle only, and are the same length.

If you choose to make larger holes, you will wish to alter the p-YO-k combination. After finishing the purl stitch, take the yarn under the needle to the back, then bring it back to front over the top of the right needle, and then take it under the needle to the back again, and proceed with the knit stitch. Work the k-YO-p combination as you usually would. Both YOs pass under the needle, over the needle, and under the needle again, and are the same length.

In either case, the altered stitch will sit on the needle in the Eastern orientation, with the right leg behind the needle. On the subsequent row or round, you will need to work this stitch through the back leg to avoid twisting the YO closed; working into the right leg, regardless of whether it's in front of or behind the needle, is the rule to avoid twisted stitches.

Warm hands, warm hearts

Just a quick announcement: there's a new pattern over in the sidebar.

Everybody's Squooshy Mitts are a pair of simple fingerless mitts, designed to be (a) a quick knit that (b) will probably fit your recipient even if you can't measure in advance and that (c) serve as a nice showcase for yummy but complicated yarn that would overwhelm a more complex pattern.

They're knitted top down (to let you use up all your yummy yarn without guessing a cuff length), with a gussetted thumb (and if you've never done a top-down gusset, I assure you it is Not Scary At All), in two sizes to fit almost everybody.

Tiny twists of fate

Twisted stitches aren't strictly related to cables, but this is still a good place to talk about them, because they often are used in a complementary way.

A twisted stitch is typically created by knitting a Western-mounted stitch through the back leg. This causes the old stitch to sit around the base of the new stitch with its legs crossed, right leg over left -- note that it's actually the old stitch which gets the twist, which can be a helpful bit of knowledge if you're trying to decipher from a piece of knitting how it was created, or to count up rows from a twisted stitch. The twisting pulls the stitch tight; fabric with a lot of twisted stitches will be shorter than an equivalent fabric with untwisted stitches, and will have less horizontal stretch. Columns of twisted stitches have an almost braided texture; also, the twist tends to cause the left edge of the column (composed of the right legs which have been twisted across) to lift slightly, which can be used for textural effects, and the resultant sharp lines are often part of the desired outcome.

In the previous paragraph, I specified that the stitch was Western-mounted, which means a stitch mounted with its right leg in front and its left leg in back of the needle, because, as you'll recall from the discussion of combined knitting, Eastern-mounted stitches produce untwisted stitches when worked through the back leg. Eastern-mounted stitches can easily be twisted by knitting them through the front leg -- note, here, that in both cases the twist is produced by knitting into the left leg, with the difference being where that left leg is located -- but it does twist in the opposite direction, with the left leg crossing over the right.

What difference does that make? It could be a lot, and this is one of the cases where the yarn in question is important. Find yourself a piece of yarn, preferably a multi-strand plied yarn, and put a loop of it over your finger. Twist your finger several times and look at what it does to the yarn, and then untwist and twist it several times the other way, and look at the difference. In one direction, this twisting will tighten the plies, so the angle at which they lie across the strand is sharper, and in the other direction it will loosen the plies, so they're almost parallel. In a similar way, twisting a stitch in one direction will tighten the yarn, while twisting it in the other way will loosen it; twisting it in the tighter way gives you a stitch that would like to untwist, which increases the tendency of that upper leg to raise up and gives you a more dramatic look, while twisting in the looser way loses some of that effect.

Most multi-strand yarns for the hand-knitting market are plied in the direction where the yarn appears to spiral upward to the left (I understand from Michele Lock's "Why Ply" article for Knitty.com that this is "S plying", but I am not vouching for the correctness of that statement -- I am not in any way a spinner). Yarn plied in this direction will tighten when twisted by knitting a Western-mounted stitch through the back leg. Singles, on the other hand, are often spun in the other direction -- Brown Sheep's Lamb's Pride is an example of this -- and some cable-plied yarns or yarns marketed primarily as crochet yarns are also plied in this direction. Yarns spun or plied in this direction will loosen when twisted by knitting a Western-mounted stitch through the back leg, but tighten when twisted by knitting an Eastern-mounted stitch through the front leg.

This consideration is an important one when selecting a yarn for a twisted-stitch project; most knitters are going to want to select an S-plied yarn, so that the twist of the yarn and the stitches work together. A combined knitter, for whom it may be easier to work twisted stitches in the other direction, may prefer to select a cable-plied yarn instead. This is not to say that a knitter may not choose to do otherwise for other reasons, but it's something to keep in mind, especially if a project doesn't seem to be working out in an ideal way.

If you find twisted stitches interesting, there's a class of knitting patterns that you may want to look into, which are the reason I chose to cover these topics together: Austrian/Bavarian traveling stitches. In this type of pattern, ribs of twisted stitches travel on a reverse stockinette ground and cross in tiny, intricate cables -- it really combines all the techniques we've been talking about, and as most of the crosses are only two stitches at a time, it's a perfect place to practice your technique for cable-needleless cables. The canonical sources for these stitch patterns are the 3-volume set Uberlieferte Strickmuster, by Maria Erlbacher; unfortunately, these books are (a) in German, and (b) appear to be out of print at this time. If you'd like a little taste, check out Eunny Jang's beautiful little Bayerische socks -- as Eunny herself notes, the 7-stitch large cable (the ribbed rope cable of charts A and C) isn't quite canonical, but they're lovely nonetheless, and will still give you a good sense of what this type of knitting is about. Enjoy!