Zatera Ul

I’m reading Hand Knitting: New Directions, by Alison Ellen. My level of knitting skill is somewhere around “intermediate,” and I found many technically interesting things in the book that I want to try out.

One of them is to learn to knit both right-handed and left-handed; this makes it easier for patterns with a lot of back and forth: you can switch directions without turning the work around. I’ve been trying it out, in stockinette stitch, but it isn’t quite working for me. I get twisted stitches, like continental stitch. What does work for me is to work the wrong-handed rows as if I’m purling from the other side. By this I mean: the same needle motions and yarn movements as normal purling, but with me on the other side of the needles. The next thing will be to learn to knit from the wrong side, I guess.

I’m left-handed, and I taught myself to knit from books with left-handed instructions like this: “If you’re left-handed, hold the book up to a mirror to reverse the pictures. And reverse the words ‘right’ and ‘left’ in the written instructions.” As if learning to knit from a book wasn’t hard enough. It was better than the “left-handed people write in the same direction as right-handed people, so they should knit in the same direction too” books, though.

I had some inkling before, that my purling left-handed was equivalent to a right-handed person’s knitting. But I hadn’t thought of using it to avoid turning the work at the end of the row. Possibly the twisted stitches are coming from some self-taught oddity in my knitting technique. Certainly, my “purling from the wrong side” is not the same needle/yarn motion as knitting right-handed. (Update: one of my Better Homes and Gardens books has it the same, but my other knitting books don’t.) But it works for me.

My favorite knitting book is A New Look at Knitting, by Elyse and Mike Sommer. Lots of foofy techniques, and even foofier projects.