No, you’re not seeing double – not really. And no, Double Knitting doesn’t mean you have to knit the same thing twice – well, not really. You are knitting two pieces of fabric at the same time to create one reversible piece of fabric. Clear as mud, right? Although technically you could use any arbitrary number of yarns and colors, Double Knitting is usually done with two colors and usually the same yarn (although there is no reason you can’t change the yarn to give you more textural alternatives).<\/p>\n
There are several ways of creating Double Knitting. The two most common are probably the easiest as well (relatively speaking). The thing is, before we can start Double Knitting, we have to cast on. You can use any two color method for casting on that you know or like, but I like using the long tail cast on with a bit of a twist to it. If you’ve read this blog previously, you may have come across the technique I showed for creating purl stitches with the long tail cast on. you’re going to implement that here. You prep this cast on by getting both using one yarn color for one tail, and the other color for the other tail. Hold the two tails as if they were one ball of yarn in the long tail method. Cast on one stitch with the first color (A) using the regular long tail method. Cast on the second stitch with the second color (B) using the reversed<\/em> long tail method. What you will have is color A stitches cast on as knit stitches and color B stitches cast on as purl stitches. Alternate the colors as needed for the pattern. Here is an excellent video that shows the method.<\/p>\n