Thursday, January 16, 2014

Twined Knitting



Okay, so I've done three evenings worth of work on the Twined Knitted hat for my brother, and thought I'd post pictures and give my initial assessment.  
First thing when it comes to twined knitting -- you are supposed to knit from a single ball, one strand from the inside of the ball and the other from the outside.  Which, since I'm knitting with two colors like is most frequently done with this style, I had to create a dual-color ball.  Not a big deal, but since I'm using worsted weight.. the ball was HUGE!!  I think it was at least 6" across..   I put a scrunchy around the outside of the ball to hold the outer-thread in place and not let it unwind unless I want it to.  This technique does work really well.  The two strands naturally twist around each other as I knit this project, so every now and then I have to untwist them.  And because of the scrunchy holding the outer yarn in place, I can just hold the whole thing up by the yarn and let it naturally spin to untwist.  Super easy.  



This is actually a picture of the work after two nights of work.  Last night I added another 7 rows or so, as I didn't spend quite as much time on it the third night, but I have completed a full repeat and then some.  This picture is just a little short of a full repeat.  I'm actually surprised how well the pattern shows in this picture.  Obviously, lighting helps strengthen the pattern visually, because in my semi-poor lighting that I tend to knit in.. it's sometimes hard to see.  Isn't it awesome though?  Below is a picture of the backside of this, where you can see it just switches colors every stitch.  I actually really like how that comes out as well, it just looks so clean.
This pattern is a little odd in it's initial creation.  You knit this tube like you see in the picture, but it's basically creating a quadruple layer of knitting that will be the main band of the hat.  When I've done 8 repeats of the pattern, I'll graft the finished end to the cast-on edge to make a loop.  I'll then attach the crown of the cap to the top of this part.  No wonder it makes for such a warm hat..with such a thick layer!


So far?  I'm impressed with twined knitting.  I think it's actually REALLY clean looking (when not mixing in a pattern), although the pattern itself looks cool as well.  But the tight color changes just look pretty amazing to me.  And the resulting fabric is really stiff, which has benefits and downsides.  I'm glad I'm learning this technique, though, and can say that I might be convinced to do it again for a pair of mitts for my brother or for me.  




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