Mirror Knitting
Hello and welcome to The Ordinary Knitter, the knitting podcast that’s (mostly) about the projects, sponsored by Ecoflap home draughtproofing products including the Petflap draughtproof pet door. Find out more about the Petflap at thepetflap.com. The Energy Efficiency Podcast is also available through Apple Podcasts, or at podcast.ecoflap.co.uk.
My name is Heather and I’m @theordknitter on Twitter, @theordinaryknitter on Instagram and @ordinaryknitting on Ravelry. This time: the second time of making a jumper for the second time, creating ears to go on a shop-bought hat, mirror knitting, and the misery of hand-knitted socks wearing through on the heel.
Ft patterns:
- Tayler by Kim Hargreaves
- Sport Boot Socks by Christina Owen
- Kat’s Devil Horn Ear-Flap Ski-Hat by Kathryn Williams
- Capitan Hat by Rosi Garmendia
Mirror Knitting
There’s been a bit of a buzz around this for a wee while now, but I’d never really paid much attention. I don’t mind purling, and one reason I changed my yarn-holding technique a few years ago was so that I could switch between knit and purl effortlessly. I had a terrible clunky hold before and kept accidentally pushing stitches off the needle as I moved the yarn back and forth on rib. So purling holds no fears for me, oh no sirree.
However, as Taylor is knitted in pieces and seamed, rather than knitted in the round, there’s an awful lot of purling. I am slower at purling than knitting so I thought I might give it a wee shot. I looked up the Very Pink video and got the hang of it straight away, to my astonishment.
I started along what would have been a purl row, but although the technique made sense straight away, my ability to wrangle the yarn while maintaining proper tension was more than a bit dodgy. I realised after about five stitches that the upper front of a jumper for my daughter was not the place to be learning a new and entirely unnecessary technique, so I did the boring but sensible thing and decided to leave it for another day. It looks really interesting though and I can see how satisfying it would be to do. I don’t think it would take long to get to grips with holding the yarn properly, so the next project that has purl it it I’ll give it a go.
Music credit:
“Carpe Diem” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/