TWINED KNITTING



I'm greatly enjoying reading Twined Knitting: A Swedish Folkcraft Technique by Birgitta Dandanell and Ulla Danielsson. I checked the book out of our wonderful library and wish I could find a decently priced used copy.



Twined knitting is also called Tvaandstickning or two-end knitting and essentially means working with two yarns of the same color (although the book briefly mentions working with 2 colors) and alternating the yarns every stitch. It is traditionally done with both ends of the same skein of yarn but I've seen others recommend against this as you can't untwist the yarns as easily. I tried a small sample and I needed to let the knitting hang from the needles and untwist quite frequently. The back of the work looks interesting - purl rows alternate between twined rows but the front also looks different. Stockinette stitch in twined knitting has a different look - the left half of the knit stitch stands out more because of all the twisting going on.



The purling is interesting in twined knitting. If you're just purling one stitch you leave both yarns in the back of the work. If you're purling the entire row of stitches you leave both yarns in front of the work and twist each stitch (which is what I do with two colors for an easy braid look). But where twined knitting really shines is when you do a crook stitch - K1, P1, K1. For this one you leave one yarn in front for purling and the yarn in back is used for knitting. To do a chain path - you do two rows of crook stitch offset by one stitch. So on the second row of crook stitch you knit the purl stitches and purl the knit stitches. You get a really pretty loopy-looking O stitch.



And here's my black Satin rabbit Flip contemplating a piece of kale as large as he is. It is tough to get a good photo of him but you can kind of see how shiny his fur is.