Sit with me Wednesday

Due to all the rain we had here locally, there was no walking for me today. Even if it had been a gorgeous day, I wouldn't have been able to walk due to being home sick with a horrible headache & general ichy feelings.

After enough meds, though, I did at least feel up to knitting. So instead of walking with me, please feel free to sit with me while I walk you through a trick I'm using to speed up work on my Icarus shawl.

Here's a little background. A few months ago, one of my online friends & fellow Mommy Connection members asked me if I purled Norwegian style, since she knew that I knit Continental. After checking that site, I had to tell her that I purl German method, according to the naming conventions on that site, even though I had learned to purl in Norway. But after checking that site, I realized that I did already know what they have listed there as "Combined Purling". It causes the purl stitch to be aligned backward on the needle, which is good for deliberately twisting the purl stitches while doing ribbing, in order to keep the ribbing tighter.

This gave me an idea while I was working on my lace. Why not deliberately use combined purling on selected stitches of the purl back row in order to save the time it takes to slip when doing SSK? There was no way I was going to experiment with that idea while in the middle of Hidcote, but it works EXCELLENTLY for Icarus.

Look carefully at the picture below:




Here you can see an Icarus spine. I have just completed the purl row, & if you look closely, you can tell that the two stitches to the left of the spine's center are aligned backwards & already in the correct direction for the SSK. Then when I reach those stitches while working the following knit row, I can just knit the two together, without slipping & turning the stitches first. It saves a little bit of time & helps with the rhythm on the knitting rows.

The trick works very well in this case, doing the spine section of Icarus, because the SSK's are in a consistent place that is easy for me to find while purling back.

For anyone who is knitting Icarus, the two stitches that need to be purled with the combined method are the first two out of the five "spine stitches" that you come to when doing the purling back row.