Saturday, November 12, 2011

From the comments

Last time I blogged, I forgot to thank the people who'd complimented the Starfleet uniform I made for DD3. So...thanks! :) I was quite pleased with it.

And Lizzie liked the ribbing in double knitting tutorial (yay!), but had some questions which I would love to answer. Unfortunately Lizzie, I don't quite understand all your questions (unsurprising given the complexity of double knitting sometimes, it can be quite hard to describe), so why don't we hash that out. Firstly, you said:

Having cast on 34 stitches in double knit

Does that mean there are 17 stitches per side, or 34 stitches per side and 68 stitches in total?

I am starting with alternatively coloured stitches when i come to this ribbing

Does this mean that your needle looks like "knitted stitch A/purled stitch B, knitted stitch A/purled stitch B, etc.", or that when you look at each side by itself, the colours are alternating there? (i.e. your needle looks like "knitted stitch A/purled stitch B, knitted stitch B/purled stitch A, etc.")

Does this mean then that I am supposed to knit each stitch twice to match the colour way that you describe (I am looking specifically at k1p1 in option 4)?

K1-P1 in option 4 means that you will need to achieve the following for the side that's facing you:

  1. a colour A knit
  2. a colour B purl
  3. repeat

Which, looking at the chart for option 4, means you need to follow these knitting steps:

  1. with yarns at back, knit with colour A
  2. with colour A at front and colour B at back, knit with colour B
  3. with colour A at back and colour B at front, purl with colour B
  4. with yarns at front, purl with colour A
  5. repeat

And then when I have two stitches of each colour next to each other, do I go on to knit each one once in the following rows?

With double knitting, you always have pairs of stitches working together. So the first two stitches on the needle are a pair: the first one will display on the side that's facing you, and the second one will display on the side that's away from you. Stitches 3 and 4 on your needle are also a pair: again (as always) the first one will display on the facing-you side, the second one will display on the away-from-you side. This continues all the way down the needle, with stitches 5 and 6 being a pair, 7 and 8 being a pair, etc.

Now, typically in double knitting, each of these pairs will have one stitch in one colour and the other stitch in the other colour. Sometimes the first one will be in colour A and the second one in colour B; and sometimes the first one will be in colour B and the second one in colour A; but the two stitches will always be different colours. (There are exceptions to this rule, but I don't think they apply here, so I won't confuse things by going into that.) This is true for ribbing as well, so no matter how your colours are set up before you get to the ribbing, the knitting steps I listed above to get your K1-P1 ribbing in option 4 will work.

Then what do I do when I move on to the rest of my pattern and have double the stitches i need, just knit each matching colour pair as one stitch?

I'm not sure why you'd have double the stitches you'd need - you're doing double knitting throughout the work, no?

I'm quite sure I've misunderstood at least some of your questions! Sorry about that. :} If you set me straight on where I've gotten confused, that would help. I always like to answer questions on the blog itself so that others who may have the same questions can get them answered, but it may take a bit of back-and-forth to work out what you need to know, so feel free to email me instead if you'd prefer: wipinsanity {at} gmail {dot} com.

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