A Look at Double-Knitting

I've been doing a lot of swatching and playing with double-knitting the past few years, so I thought it might be fun to look at it in a bit more depth.

For those not familiar with it, double-knitting is a method of knitting that produces a fabric with no wrong side. Your finished product has two right sides, making it excellent for blankets, scarves, shawls, and even hats. This can be accomplished with one yarn/color by knitting and slipping alternating stitches, or with 2 yarns/colors (or more!) by knitting with one and purling with the other.

Designs can be knitted in by altering which color you use for the knits and purls. This produces a mirror image of the design on the other side, in opposite colors. For example a red flower on a blue background on side A is a blue flower on a red background on side B. This is regular or standard double-knitting, and it produces fabulous results.

Of course, there's always the desire to push the envelope. Standard double-knitting's mirrored image "back" side is problematic for words and numbers or other non-symmetrical elements. Which brings us to 2 pattern double-knitting. This method allows you to knit words that read the same front and back, handy for personalizing scarves for example. Or you could be like me and want two completely different images on either side like this heart and house square I knit last fall:

Completely different yet knit at the same time.

Last week I was playing with 3 colors in a regular double-knit. Because of the third color this method is approached, and charted, the same way a 2 pattern double-knit is done. Here's what I was playing with:

In my scarf pattern Rínce Fada (you can find all of my patterns at the pattern tab above), I used both standard and 2 pattern double-knitting. I also delved into double-knit cables and textured stitches. I bordered the long sides of the scarf with simple rope cables on reverse stockinette panels, you can see in this close up photo:

That small bit of cabling in a double-knit project has led me to other experiments with cables. I'm currently working on a swatch of 2 XO cable panels in opposite colors, on reverse stockinette stitches done in the opposite color. That sounds very confusing so here's what it looks like currently:

The reverse side is identical to this side. Because of the way I structure my cables in double-knitting, I could knit the opposite side completely flat in the same stripe sequence or even in only one of the colors. Even a third color! Oh the possibilities!

How am I doing this? By employing 2 short cable needles (I used toothpicks with the fingering weight yarn of Rínce Fada! Yes, really. Wooden toothpicks are grippy, and easily found in the house) I'm able to work my cables on only one layer of the fabric rather than twisting both sides of it together. So while the swatch in my photo is destined for a blanket pattern, I have other ideas where non-reversible cables may form a large part. Fun! 

Looking for more on double-knitting? Visit Alasdair Post-Quinn's website (linked in the sidebar; Fallingblox Designs) or YouTube channel (search for Fallingblox Designs). Also on YouTube, look for Lattes & Llamas; they release the annual Geek Along Afghan blocks which are double-knit.

Yours in yarn and double the stitches ;)

Síle

(All photos are of my own projects and patterns, some not yet published.)