Awareness Through Knitting: Twisted Stitches

I recently joined a Yahoo group for new knitters, hoping that I could answer a few questions now and then. Of course, all the gnarly questions are the ones I love, and it's much more than now and then!

Today there was a question about how to wrap the yarn around the needle for knitting and purling, and what constitutes "twisting stitches," and what difference it makes if you do twist them.

You know how much II love questions that look simple, but in fact, can get very complicated, very fast! If you don't want the long answer, you don't want to read this post!

The first thing to remember is that if you're getting the result you want, you're doing it right, so you don't have to worry.

Then you need to decide whether you want to do it "like everybody else," and if you do, then it'll be easier if you understand some basic things about how knit and purl stitches are formed, which is the subject of this post.You need to look at your knitting and determine whether you can see a difference from one row to the next in your knitting, so that it looks roughly like this:

l l l l l l l l l l l
/ / / / / / / / / / /
l l l l l l l l l l l
/ / / / / / / / / / /

or whether they all line up like little v's with open bottoms -- sort of like this:

\/\/\/\/\/
\/\/\/\/\/
\/\/\/\/\/
\/\/\/\/\/

If you pull your stitch to the right as you put the needle into it, you should be able to see that the bottom of the stitch separates, with the right side of the stitch coming from the right, going up and around the back of the stitch in the row above, and then coming down on the left side and going to the right side of the next stitch. The yarn moves in a pattern like unununu -- with the left side of the u and the right side of the n stuck together into one line. The flow of the line is circular, open at the top, then open at the bottom, then at the top again, etc. (What you can't see in my diagram is the part of the stitch that goes around the ones above and below.)

On the other hand, if you're twisting your stitches, the stitch will be hard to enter with the needle, and when you pull it to the right, the yarn at the bottom will be coming from the left. I can't think of a keyboard stroke that will show this, but if you pull on your stitches as described above, the right side of the stitch will come from the left. This sounds weird, I know. What it looks like is a string of cursive eeeeeeeee's -- remember how we used to make curlicues when we were learning to write?

Patterns written in the United States assume that you are ALWAYS forming your stitches by wrapping your yarn around the needle from the bottom right to the top left, whether you're knitting or purling. If you were just wrapping the yarn and not knitting it, it would look like this as it crossed the needle:

-\-\-\-\-\-\------

If you're picking it up that way on the purl rows and if you're picking it up from bottom left to top right as it crosses the needle

---/-/-/-/-/-/-/-------

on KNIT rows,then you ARE twisting your stitches...and you should be able to see that every other row of your finished work has a slant to it, while the alternating rows are more vertically aligned, as the diagrams above (hopefully) shows...

UNLESS
you're combining that with something else that would negate the twist -- and that has to do with how you enter the stitch.

The assumption for US patterns is that to KNIT,
you enter the stitch from the left side of the front of the stitch, with the needle pointing away from you;
and that to PURL,
you enter the stitch from the right side of the front of the stitch, with the needle pointing towards you.

Here's where it gets tricky
--If you pick up the yarn "wrong" on one row (I use parentheses, because it's only wrong if you don't know what you're doing),
then enter that stitch on the following row from the BACK of the stitch instead of the FRONT,
you will straighten out any twist you may have been about to make!

If you enter in the back and pick up the yarn the "right" way, and don't fix it on the next row, you also get a twist.

If you enter in the wrong place and pick the yarn up wrong, too, then you've encountered one fo the few situations in life where two wrongs make a right -- in that case, you don't get a twist, because the two things that would produce the twist have cancelled each other out!

This also means that if you encounter a stitch that's positioned wrong on the needle, you don't have to turn it around before knitting it, you just have to know how to put your needle into it and how to pick up the yarn.

Of course, none of this matters, as long as your garment looks the way you want it to look, and if it does, you can just continue doing what you're doing. The only thing is that sometimes, if you don't knit according to the assumptions about knitting, you won't be able to follow the directions for a particular pattern, unless you can see or visualize what the designer is aiming at and figure out how to get it in your own way.

Why slog through understanding this?
1. Once you really get it, you won't ever worry about taking your stitches off the needles to rip out rows. Once you know how the stitch is supposed to look when it comes off the needle after you knit it again, and you know how to acheive that, you won't care at all about how you pick those puppies up -- all you'll have to concentrate on is actually getting them -- any which way -- onto the needle where they won't run... and then you can breathe.

2. If somebody messes up your knitting, you're not at a loss for how to fix it.

3. Knitting is a metaphor for life. How we knit reflects how we go about everything else. Knit with awareness and we increase our awareness of everything else we do, including eating, smoking and being in relationships. Increasing awareness puts us more in control of our actions and helps us to stop being victims.

4. What have you got to lose?

Allison

"When you know what you're doing, you can do what you want!"
(Moshe Feldenkrais)

My trip to Germany was wonderful!!

Well, being in Germany was wonderful, anyway, and teaching in the Feldenkrais Training Program was great, as it always is.

The actual transportation part was the trip from hell, beginning with arriving at Sacramento Airport in plenty of time for the flight, only to find out that the airplane was delayed longer than my layover in Chicago, so I wouldn't be able to make my connection to Munich. There wasn't another flight to Munich that day, so the agent nonchalantly told me that I'd have to fly the next day. Sure. That would get me there after the training had started. A great way to begin!

"There's a flight to Munich from LA," I said. "I can't wait until tomorrow because I won't get there until Monday and I have to teaching already on Monday."

"Well, there is room on that flight, but I can't get you to LA," she said, "all the flights from here are full."

I told her that there were flights to Frankfurt and connections to Munich (isn't it supposed to be her job to know that??) and asked if she couldn't get me on one of those.

"Can you get to San Francisco?" she asked. "I can get you on a Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt from San Francisco, but I can't get you to San Francisco."

Before I gave in and got a cell phone, I thought I didn't need one. Now as I pulled mine out, I wondered what I'd do if I hadn't had one. I called Michael (who told me that if we hadn't had phones, he wouldn't have left me in the first place. Oh, Right -- we used to speak face to face before cell phones... I remember now). I told him to come back and get me, and off we went to the big city airport.

I thought everything was fine, but it turned out that I didn't really have a reservation and of course the flight was full. Then there was a problem with the ticket -- turns out that although United and Lufthansa are partners, they aren't really partners. You know, like they don't really take any responsibility for each other's messes. I finally got a boarding pass for a United flight and although I'd arrived at the airport almost 2 hours before the flight was scheduled to leave, I just made it to the plane in time to board. Then, of course, we sat at the gate while they fixed the obligatory problem, in this case, a non-functioning radio. Finally, we were pushed away from the gate, and the pilot tried to start the engines... and #2 didn't want to start. Well, that required returning to the gate. We finally took off about an hour late. Of course they were planning to make it up so we wouldn't miss our connections... but of course they didn't, and of course, we did miss our connections.

Planning on visiting Germany? Let me give you a tip: Skip the Frankfurt airport, which excels in its complete lack of useful signage. This isn't a language problem, believe me. Every German I know who's familiar with Frankfurt airport agrees. I needed to find the "A" gates. There were signs everywhere for the "B" gates, but none for the ones I needed. If I hadn't had two hours -- thanks to missing my original connection, I would have missed the replacement flight, too.

Finally on the ground in Munich, I patted myself on the back for packing my teaching materials, my toiletries and a change of clothes in my carry-on bag, because -- you guessed it -- my bags didn't make the connection! I am sure that when I was already standing at the lost luggage counter in Munich, the baggage handlers in Frankfurt were still looking for the "A" gates. Anyway, I was assured that my bags would be delivered to the island where I was staying as soon as they arrived.

Right. They came late the next day, and Angela, the intrepid program organizer, had to go to the mainland to get them because the delivery guy doesn't do the boat thing. She waited hours for the driver to show up, which he did 5 minutes before the last boat that night sailed to the island. Let me tell you, you gotta love the airlines.

Coming home, everything seemed to be a piece of cake in comparison. I got to the airport in Munich with plenty of time, my flight was on time, and when I got to Chicago, I zoomed ahead of the fatigued, the people struggling with kids, the people who should have asked for wheelchairs; I flashed through immigration -- most of the passengers were Europeans, so the 20-odd Americans had 4 agents to outselves; I got my bags (why are they never lost when customs is involved??), cleared customs, gave my bags back to United and jumped on the train to change terminals.

I had an hour and fifteen minutes to catch my flight, and believe it or not, I barely made it! I got to the gate just in time to be noticeable as "the passenger we're waiting for," the last person on board Flight 735 on April 21 -- the day the passenger in the next row back decided to leave the airplane somewhere between Chicago and Denver, while we were still at 30,000+ feet. Yup. He tried to open the door, then took a swing at the flight attendant when she tried to stop him. He was convinced he was supposed to die, and it took several passengers to subdue him. (The hero who got him in a chokehold was a guy who'd been supposed to fly on the plane that went into the field on 9/11. ) There were a couple of secret service agents on board -- they were en route to Sacramento to guard Bush who was visiting Arnie, but I'm not gonna get started on that. Anyhow, they had handcuffs, and somebody had duct tape, which is what they used to make the guy stay in a seat until we could land "somewhere safe," as the pilot put it.




We had a jet fighter escort into Denver and landed at something that seemed like a 45 degree angle. They off-loaded the guy, then all of us with our carry-on bags. Out in the middle of a cow field where an explosion would only damage the underlying tarmac, the plane and all of us, they lined us up and had the bomb dogs give us a sniff, then eventually bussed us to the terminal, gave us a little speech about how great we all were and what their plan was for getting us home, and then set us loose to buy our own dinner. I bought a salad with chicken, and a big dish of ice cream. I almost ate the ice cream first because I'd just had a real-life lesson about how undpredictable life really is, but I craved the protein more so I ate the chicken first.

Our flight left again at 7:30 with a new crew. You know, United charges for everything now, except for soft drinks and those little packet of pretzels. Everything else if $5, even the "snack packs." I never drink alcohol on an airlane, but I actually thought it would have been a good public relations move to offer us as much as we could swallow between Denver and Sacramento. Guess again.

We got to Sacramento around 9 PM, only about 3 hours late. Surprising that you could pack such an adventure into such a small space of time.

To tell you the truth, while it was happening, I wasn't much perturbed by the whole incident. After all, if that little switch is in the right position, you can't even open the back door of any car in the United States from inside the back seat --I figured there was no way they were going to let 144 people into an airplane where somebody could come along and open the door up there in the sky and let everybody be sucked out by accident, let alone by intention. Googling turned up the reason why it's like that -- every airplane door opens inward and the pressure inside the cabin exerts such a force on the door that it can't be overcome, even by a crazy person.

However, two days later, I discovered why the fighters where there and that's when I had to run to the bathroom!

Lots of new things have been arriving lately!

Vogue Knitting has a new magazine, Knit Simple. It's geared toward beginning knitters and people with no time -- that about covers it, from my perspective! The first issue has lots of chunky sweaters, scarves and hats, and has some cute crochet patterns, too.

We've got the rest of the Nashua Handknits colors now... what a beautiful array! Some of the skeins are so intensely striped that people think they're different colors!

Yesterday, the Paint Box from Knit One, Crochet Too arrived. We didn't have a chance to open the box until late in the day, and Karyn is swooning from 10 colorways we've got. Again, long stripes, these with more subtle color changes, and it knits up on size 7 needles at 3.5 stitches per inch. It's got a really nice feel, but it WILL felt if you wash it in the machine, so consider it for your felting projects, too!

Lots more new stuff, but no more time!

I recently discovered a new yarn line, Nashua Handknits. They produce some really beautiful long-striping yarns that we've just received at Fibers, and we'll be carrying two of them, Wooly Stripes and Equinox Stripe.

Wooly Stripes is 100% wool and comes in 50 gram, 88 yard balls. It knits up on size 8 - 10 needles at 4 to 4.5 stitches to the inch. We have the whole color line.

Equinox Stripe is 73% Wool, 27% Acrylic. It comes in 100 gram ball, with 60 yards to the ball. (You can tell how much bigger the gauge will be, can't you? The balls are twice the weight, but have less yardage than the Wooly Stripes, so you know that this yarn has to be much chunkier.) The gauge for Equinox is 2 stitches to the inch, on a size 15 needle. No waiting for results with this yarn! The stripes are interesting because this is actually a marl yarn -- it's composed of several strands of yarn in different colors that are plied together. The colors change subtly because only one strand changes at a time. We'll be carrying 5 colors, of which one is in stock at the moment.

These are perfect for modular and multi-directional knitting, and while we have pattern support for these yarns from Nashua Handknits, there are lots of patterns that work with their gauges, and these yarns are going to be a lot of fun to knit up, so come have a feel, if you want a yarn that feels wonderful, and knits up in very nice colorways with a great stripe effect.

I'm having trouble getting out the newsletter in a timely way, because I'm too much of a perfectionist. I decided to start a blog, so that you can track what's new at Fibers. I'll still put the newsletter out, but hopefully, this will take some of the pressure off, the newsletter can be less burdensome, and those of you who are interested in the details can get them.