The versatility of knitting never ceases to excite me. I mean it!

There are still a lot of people (especially here in NZ, sigh) who think of knitting as scratchy wool cardigans and old ladies wearing nylon knee hose. I guess it’s our little secret, then, just what a fertile field knitting really is, and that they don’t really deserve to be on our gift lists.

I started to explore curves and 3-d shaping for knitting when I was working on my book. The Mouse Family, which have shaped bottoms and noses (how else could they sit comfortably let alone hongi?), were a reason to learn properly about short rows.

I recall trying to watch a video showing how to knit the wrap with the knit stitch. You what? It didn’t have stop motion, or even slow motion, so I watched over and over again and still felt like I was fumbling.

I’d learned that shorting the row was the least of it. The big question was, how to hide the wrap and close the hole all at once?

Lately I’ve been working on something that’s double-sided and needs a continual curve, therefore constant short rows on both the knit and purl side. The knit side was a breeze. (You can see my instructions over in the the lessons menu here).

It was the purl wraps that had me stumped. But now I’ve got it, so here it is.

Note: the instructions for wrapping the purl stitch are over in the lessons menu here.

You will have wrapped a purl stitch, turned your work, and knit the following short row.

Now, to purl past the wrap.

1. here it is (below), the little bump you want to hide, seen from the knit side.

2. Purl to the wrapped stitch. The needle points to the wrap you want to purl together with the next stitch.

3. Insert your needle into the BACK of the wrap, from behind. If you already know how to purl through the back of the loop, no problem, but if you don’t here’s  an easy way to see what you’re doing. Turn your work over and insert your working needle into the stitch from the knit side (this is equivalent to inserting it from the back on the purl side).

4. Slide the wrap onto the needle next to the stitch you’re going to purl.

5. Turn your work so that the purl side is facing you. Insert your working needle into both the wrap and the purl stitch and purl them together.

6. Here’s the result,  seen from the knit side. You can’t see the wrap. Hooray!

This entry was posted on Monday, March 8th, 2010 at 3:38 pm and is filed under Lessons. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.