The Knitting Fiend

You may remember that when I knit the lower band on the sweater, I was lazy and knit half twisted rib; only the front side was twisted?

Well, I realized that’s a bad idea for cuffs. After all, Jim might want to turn his cuffs back, and he might think it odd if the front and back sides look different. So, I twisted the stitches on both sides when knitting the cuffs. You can see both sides of the rib in the image to the left; I folded the cuff it so you can compare sides.

To twist the back side, I had to “purl through the back loops”. To do that, I place the tip of the right needle to the left of the leftleg of the stitch and slide it left to right through the hole. The left leg is called the back loop because it lies behind the left needle– that is away from you, in back.

I find I tend to fold the needles so the the tips point toward and the handles away from me as I do this. The stitch will twist– see figure to the left. Afterwards, I wrap the yarn around the right tip in the normal way for a purl stitch.

Because working a ptbl (purl through back loop) seems like a pain in the neck when I work just one, I had sort of expected twisting the purl side would be tedious. Turns out it’s not. Once you get the hang of it, it’s just as easy as normal purling.

Although I’m tempted to tell you to go to my recently written article to see how to twist the front stitches, that seems silly. To twist the front stitches, you “knit through the back loop”. To do this, insert the right needle tip to the right of the left (also back) leg of the stitch on the left tip. Slide it right to left. (See figure to the left. Note that I’m also binding off — that’s why there’s only one stitch on the right tip.)

Wrap the yarn you normally do to knit, then pull the stitch through. It will be twisted.

Just work all the stitches through back loops and you’ll end up with this ribbing that makes other knitters exclaim, “How did you do that?”