Sleight of Hand

A few weeks ago, I paid $40 to take my first knitting class--the Fair Isle Hat Class. I attended only one of the two days because by the time I'd finished the first class, I had grasped the concept of Fair Isle knitting and finished the project that same night. By the time the second class came around, I had finished my second hat. Instead of taking the second half of the class, I stayed home and napped that day. I vowed that unless it was something I felt the internet couldn't teach me, I was not going to take another class. $40 buys a lot of yarn.

Can you find my mistake? I may let it stand...

When I saw the Michigan double knit hat at the yarn store, I wanted the pattern, but didn't want to take the class to get the pattern. I talked the young lady, Ann Marie, who created the pattern, into selling it to me without taking the class. Of course, I had no clue how to do double knitting, but I wasn't going to let that stop me. After paying for the pattern, I went home and googled, double knitting. I found a video on KnittingHelp.com (I love that site and owe all of my initial skill to their videos), and a great article on Knitty.com, another fabulous site for skill building, not to mention free patterns. Following Ann Marie's pattern, I cast on for the 2 colored hat and I haven't looked back.

Double knitting is nothing short of magical. Magical. Essentially, I'm knitting two hats at once--a tube within a tube-- that are connected only at the cast on edge, and again at the M. The connection occurs when the knitter swaps the position of the two yarns. In this case, I knit the M in blue on the yellow side and in yellow on the blue side. Ingenious! I will say, this is not a technique you'll embrace if you hate to purl. Though it's clear that this is a stockinette pattern, and knit in the round, and we know that every stitch is knit to get that effect, to create a mirror image, one color is knit and the second color is purled. Fixing mistakes? Oy. Now that's a challenge. I have 2 errors that I missed, but I'll fix those in the end by embroidering over them with yarn (gotta love duplicate stitching!). Then again, I may let the mistakes stand.

Mirror image made by alternating colors and the knit/purl stitch. The yellow stitches are knit and the blue purled. To make the M, I knit the blue and purled the yellow.

There are several applications for this technique, one of which I'll try after the first of the year: two socks at a time knit one inside the other.

Be still my little knitter's heart.