dirtypuzzle:

kessira:

knottybliss:

yarnnerd1914:

the-fibre-stuff:

knottybliss:

buttercupyarnart:

knottybliss:

the-fibre-stuff:

knottybliss:

knottybliss:

I finished a shawl! Knitting! Aaaaand I am probably going to have to frog it.

For reasons I have not been able to puzzle out, the top edge (which is the end of the rows) has NO stretch.

Therefore, the whole thing sort of buckles/puckers around the top center, which is where I started. There has got to be some method to having a springier edge, I just don’t know what it is.

I do like how the patterning in the body came out, anyway, and it was good practice. I’m faster and smoother now with both knitting and purling than I was when I began. Since that was, ultimately, the goal? I’m feeling pretty good about it overall.

MISTAKES ARE FOR LEARNING! FUCKUPS ALLOW FOR GROWTH.

if anybody has thoughts about how I might have achieved a stretchier edge with my row ends, please advise.

The pattern is Lionberry by Narniel of Endor and is a free download on Ravelry.

@walruses-can-fly You are asking useful, incisive questions about something with which I requested examination and assistance - not an ahole move in the least!

That said I don’t THINK I’m twisting my purl rows, but I will go review some How To Purl instructions just to make sure.

FWIW I have now redone this pattern in entirety with a different yarn and deliberately loose tension, and it actually seems to be a function of the pattern as written rather than me fucking up.

A dubious win?

Bliss, looking at the hat you just knit, I think there is a reasonable chance that you might be twisting your stitches. (I didn’t look hard to figure out what it was, but there was something off about the fabric, to the same degree as twisted stitches.) Double check your knit ones too. When you’re looking at instructions, make sure you find ones that reference how the stitches should sit on the needle, because it’s easier to catch a mistake if you get that bit. I know that when I started knitting and was twisting all my purls it was because I was wrapping the yarn the wrong way around the needle, and since the instructions where “the side towards the tip of the needle” and just assumed I had them seated correctly, I kept getting it wrong.

I didn’t like hearing this at all

So I went to look at some beginner knitting videos, and I learned

I HAVE BEEN DOING MY KNIT STITCH BACKWARDS

My purl stitch is fine, lol, but I have been passing the yarn front to back for my knit stitches

…

I’m glad I learned this now, I guess

Thank you

I twisted all my purls when I picked knitting back up after years of only crochet, so I’d say it’s probably a pretty common thing to have happen! I didn’t have anyone to point it out to me directly, I had to discover it on my own, so at least you’re finding out now and not years down the line!

I have been (attempting) knitting and stopping in frustration on and off for

*checks watch*

…close to thirty years now, so this is an exquisite anguish and delight all in one

My mom once taught me how to knit. It was the very first time, and it took about two days for her to ban me from knitting. (She hadn’t taught me to cast on, because she only knew the thumb cast on, so every time I frogged the entire piece she had to cast on for me, so her ban was fairly reasonable). Every other time (I think there were three total?) that I took up knitting after that, I taught myself from a book.

I don’t consider myself a self-taught knitter, because having another knitter there, who can look at your stuff and say something like “your stitches are twisted” makes such a difference in how easy it is to learn. Sure, I still had to figure out what the problem was all by myself, but at least I knew to look for it!

Question. And this is totally only if you have the spoons. I’m a self taught continental knitter and could someone either post a link or show what a twisted stitch looks like vs the regular stutch?

Conveniently I have some samples!

On the left are the twisted stitches, from the hat. When I made these I was putting my needle through and wrapping the yarn around the top of it toward me, then down between the two needles. This gives me stitches where the yarn comes in from one side, loops up and around, and crosses over itself before exiting the opposite side.

On the right are stitches in the flat-knit shawl I am doing to practice changing the muscle memory. For those, I put the needle through the same but bring the yarn up between the needles and wrap over the top away from myself before pulling through. This gives me stitches that come in from one side and go up around in a horseshoe shape before exiting the other side, never crossing over.

You can also see how on the correctly done stitch when I pull it sideways, it opens up, whereas the twisted stitches tighten against themselves.

I’m so glad I did this little explainer because it makes it even more clear to me how the twisted stitch was ruining the knit lace attempts I did in the past.

I am learning so much this week, I love you guys 😭🥰🤗

When I started knitting I was also purling wrong, turns out which way you wrap your yarn around the needle DOES matter, so I had to relearn purling. Ironically one of my first hat projects was supposed to be a twisted rib but my bad purling + twisted knit just gave me a straight rib XD

Oh! Actually I learned this halfway through a shawl so you can see the difference in one piece (because no going back, we accept mistakes and move on). I don’t actually remember what made me realise I was doing it wrong

Below the blue line, every other row (which was purled) is twisted, and one leg goes of the stitch appears to go under the other, rather than sitting evenly

When I went to pick up knitting, I was much more worried about my tension, so I paid a lot of attention to that in my first swatch. I posted it to reddit and they were like, “Hey, you’re twisting your stitches” and then linked me to a post that some amazing but crazy redditor did cataloguing literally every possible way to knit/purl to achieve desired twist or no twist. (Because you can knit untwisted in the back loop, too, which is my preferred method to make purling go faster.)

So I will pass along this beautiful post.

r/knitting - Stockinette- A tutorial on 6 different textures from one stitch!

395 votes and 48 comments so far on Reddit

reddit

This goes over everything, including how to stay untwisted in the round (or twist on purpose!).

Oh my gosh, I was twisting my knit stitches for YEARS and I didn’t notice because I taught myself knitting as a kid and it wasn’t until I was like 20 and trying to gauge swatch and getting frustrated as to why I could never get gauge or why my knit projects didn’t look how I wanted them to and on a whim like 5 years ago I looked up a how to knit video and needed a day to recover from the shock that I have in fact been wrapping my yarn the wrong way on my knit stitches the entire time.