Combination knitting

I’m writing the page not because there aren’t good existing pages on the web but be because they don’t explain things the way I would, and different people find different kinds of explanations more useful.

Combination knitting is a knitting style in which purl stitches are wrapped or picked so that the yarn loops around the needle in the opposite direction from “standard” knitting (called western) but knit stitches are wrapped in the standard direction, resulting in knit and purl stitches that are oriented slanting differently on the needle. For some methods of knitting this can be significantly more comfortable and efficient. For me, I find the standard continental knit very comfortable but the standard continental purl to have an annoying extra step. Combination knitting fixes this; I purl like a knit in the opposite direction and it’s just as easy as the knit stitch but with the way symmetry works it ends up oriented the other way.

The disadvantage of combination knitting is that knitting instructions assume that all of your stitches are oriented so that the leading leg is always in front and that you always knit through the front leg. Here are some of my explanations on how to deal with this difficulty. I often assume that you have access to good instructions for knitting the standard way and I only provide explanation on translating them.

Basics

If you look at any knitting stitch on the needle, it is slanted on the needle (if you can’t see this, stretch the fabric a little and you will see that the front half pull one way and the back half pull the other.) The leg that is closer to the front of the needle is called the leading leg, and the other the following leg. The one that is in the front of the needle is called the front leg and the other the back leg. For some reason many patterns call them loops rather than legs despite the fact that they are just different parts of the same loop.

For any stitch pattern consisting of knits and purls, all you need to do to avoid twisted stitches is always knit (or purl) through the leading leg. This is true whether you are knitting in the flat or the round. This is also true for all knitters; the part that’s different for combination knitters is that sometimes the leading leg is the front leg and sometimes it’s the back leg. People who are used to knitting such that the leading leg is always the front leg just think of it as the front leg rather than the leading leg, and these are the people for whom the directions are written. If you are a combination knitter and want to be able to predict whether the leading leg will be in the front or the back, just figure out how the stitch was created; if it was created by knitting it will be in the front and if it was created with purling it will be in the back.

Most knitting directions can be fixed to work for combination knitters by simply replacing “front” with “leading” and “back” with “following”. This should work with any stitch that was created by knitting or purling. Sometimes instructions refer to things that were created other ways, for example by picking up a different part of the stitch. Often in this case front and back should be read as they were written, since they were created according to the instructions.

It’s useful to know how to knit the standard way even if you find it un-ideal so that you can check if you’re getting the same results in cases where you’re not sure. If you have directions that you really can’t figure out how to convert to combination knitting, you have two options. The first is knitting the standard way for just that part. The second is to re-orient all of the relevant stitches so that the leading leg is in front, and then follow the directions. If you do either of these for a bit, you will see how it is supposed to work and it likely becomes more clear how to create the correct pattern without needing to re-orient as many stitches.

Increases

Most kinds of increases do not change in combination knitting. For KFB to come out the same as it would if a western knitter did it, you will need to slip and re-orient if the leading leg is in back.

Decreases

The basic decreases are denoted k2tog and ssk in most knitting patterns.

k2tog is the decrease that hides the left stitch under the right one. To create one, make sure the next two stitches are oriented so that the leading legs are in front. If they aren’t, slip them to the right needle and then back to the left, flipping the orientation if necessary. Then knit them together through the front/leading leg. The needle will go through the second one and then the first one.

SSK is the decrease that hides the right stitch under the left one. Make sure that the next two stitches are oriented so that the leading legs are in back, and then knit them together through the leading/back leg.

Often combination knitters refer to always switching these two; you have slipping when you do a k2tog and don’t have slipping when you do a ssk. This is true when you are working the right side of stockinette in the flat. The directions I’ve given work for any stitch pattern.