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A Double Increase and Another Knitting Heresy

I made another reversible lace video. This time, I'm demonstrating the knit, yarn over, knit into the same stitch double increase.


In reversible lace, you'll substitute knit-purl, double yarn over, then knit and purl again in the same stitch pair. The maneuver is a little fiddly, but it does get easier with practice.
  • Knit 1, paying attention to where the left shoulder of the mother knit stitch is.
  • Purl, but do not drop the mother purl stitch off the left needle.
  • Bring the left needle tip up behind and into the shoulder of the mother knit stitch.
  • Double yarn over.
  • Put the right needle in "through the back of the loop" position and knit the shoulder.
  • Purl again, but this time drop the old stitch off the left needle.

Working out how to do this maneuver made me realize it may indeed be possible to knit into the same stitch twice! Heresy!

In normal knitting, you can't work the same stitch twice. In the video, I show you how this doesn't work. Specialty stitches such as bobbles, nupps, and star stitches use knit, yarn over, knit — or even longer strings of alternating knits and yarn overs — to generate multiple stitches from one stitch. But in reversible lace, each stitch is a knit-purl pair. You can knit, purl, then back up and knit again without creating the intervening yarn over, and purl. It does not violate the laws of three-dimensional reality to do this multiple times.

I have hardly begun to explore the possibilities! In addition to having a new way of creating specialty stitches, it might be possible to mimic some crochet stitches. In crochet, you can work into the same stitch multiple times. There are some maneuvers crocheters do that knitters do not do. But, those might be possible in reversible lace.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Very Cool!! Pam