There are so many wonderful techniques to learn when you
knit and crochet so we would like to explore some of these with you each month
on this blog.
The first fascinating technique we are going to look at is
Double Knitting. A double layered,
reversible piece of fabric is produced by simultaneously knitting the front and
the back on one set of needles. Most often you will use it for colour work
using two yarns. The back of the fabric
is a mirror image of the front.
Here is an example of a lovely coaster.
It sounds complicated but it really isn’t and there are lots
of wonderful, cosy patterns on Ravelry to try out.
The most important thing is to set up your stitches correctly,
which is where the cast on is critical.
One method is to cast on the stitches with the two yarns doubled up
which gives the braided effect you can see in the picture. If your pattern has
20 stitches for one side then you cast on 20 stitches. Then when you come to
work the first row you need to decide which is going to be the colour for the
front and which for the back from the two loops that represent each stitch. You
knit the front stitch in colour A and then purl the back stitch in colour B
with both yarns coming to the front of your work on the purl stitch. So in the
design you see here, we knitted in green and then purled in red. After the
first row you will have 40 stitches in work.
This video shows you
how to do it.
Another technique is to cast on 20 stitches in just one
colour. Then on your first row knit into
the front of the first stitch in colour A then purl in to the back of the same
stitch in colour B and repeat across the row. Again, after the first row you
will have 40 stitches. Using two colours helps you to identify which stitches
belong to which side.
Another top tip is to think about the effect you want to
create at the edge of your work. We like
the braided effect so we knit the first and last stitch of each row using both
yarns together. You might also like to consider slipping the first stitch of
each row for a different effect.
When you knit a pattern in double knitting you will have a
chart like this to work from. You will
in effect be knitting each square twice.
Once for the front and again for the back in the second colour. The
white squares refer to your dominant colour for each side and the black squares
for the second colour to create the pattern.
We found this video very useful.
Casting off is very straightforward. You will need to knit each pair of
stitches (front and back) together as
you go either with both yarns or just one colour, depending on your cast on.
Whichever method you use you might find it easier to knit through the back of
both stitches.
You might find that your tension is looser when you knit in
this way but that is perfectly normal and the tension will have been taken into
account in your pattern, but it is well worth doing a tension square when you
are trying out this technique.
We hope this has given you a taste for double
knitting. If you do try and have any
problems do let us know and we will get our knitting agony aunt to
help you.
