Knit for Brains

As I’m learning to knit it’s been important to understand what I’m seeing so I can know what to or what I just did in case I lose track or need to fix something. Also, learning to knit you grow into knitting from memory, knowing what you are doing and applying the stitches based on where you see you are in the pattern, not just on your chart or instructions.

What’s a knit and what’s a purl? I see that a knit stitch is when you pull the loop through toward you and a purl is where you pull the yarn loop through away from you, leaving a sort of bar across the stitch on your side. As you stitch along you will learn to recognize what you are about to stitch onto and that will help you do the right stitch in the right place.

You will also want to be able to recognize when you twisted a stitch, or are about to. The front of each loop – your side of the needle – on your needle in rows after your cast on will be either to the left or the right, depending on your knitting style. Be aware that if you stitch into the loop end that is closer to the tip of your needle it will NOT twist the stitch below it.  If you knit into the side of the loop that is farther from the needle you WILL twist the stitch. It seems all twisting will twist the stitch below the one you are doing, not the one you are doing. I may be wrong, but that’s what is see so far. So unless you are planning to cause a twist, always be sure you adapt your stitch so you are pulling through the center of the loop, just left of the side nearest the tip of the left needle, or it will twist.

Another reason to know what you are seeing is if make a mistake and catch it after a few loops and dare to unknit to correct it. If you do, be sure you put your loops back on the left needle so they are turned the right way (see below).

In the clever diagram below you are looking down on the top of the needle with yarn loops on it, and would want to work around the upper/far side of the needle to avoid twists as that side is nearer the tip. I ran into this loop orientation in eastern European knitting.

Example A: |——-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/—–>

In the clever diagram below you would want to work around the bottom/near side of the needle to avoid twists.

Example B: |——————–>

PK is always looped like B above regardless of the stitch.

Sometimes with eastern European knitting I would get a mix of loops, which confused me, as shown in the clever diagram below:

Example C: |———-/–/–/–/–/–/——-> 

This would happen if I was doing kpkpkpk for ribbing in this example. So I watched more youtube videos and found I was doing something wrong and now I don’t get that error. So when you see the videos watch very closely and observe your resulting loops to see if there is evidence you are getting twisting errors like in example C.

As I mentioned elsewhere, EEK doesn’t work for knitting in the round, so I will be doing Portuguese knitting for many projects, including two color work like Fair Isle when I get around to it as from watching the Andrea Wong DVD it seems like it’s easy to manage the yarn, which is what I like best about PK.

EEK it’s great for fast flat knitting. Gail is really fast at it, and she says her tension is very even.

Thanks for visiting.

- Eric

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