Hook ‘n Spin – A true fiber addict

I finished my first knitted shawl.  It is the Traditional Danish Tie Shawl from a published magazine pattern.  (I love the magazine, but I don’t advertise for anyone without pay.)  I posted it on a  Ravelry forum (a free community, so I will advertise) and received a question about the two charts posted for knitting.  This was too good of a learning style discussion to keep it locked behind a closed community, so I will share.

The reply from Craftymom2two to my post was:  “What is the difference between chart one and two?  I do notice that there is a difference in how the stitch is made, but how will that change the look of the shawls?”

The difference was chart one had you knitting into the yarn overs and chart two had you knitting into the back loop of the yarn overs.  I used chart 1 and admitted I did not know the answer, but…I would find out!

My expert and patient friends from spinning guild tell me that when you knit the usual way into a yarn over, it makes an open space (a hole). I can attest to that, it is a planned one and looks good, on the lacy side. You may be able to see in my picture below that there are indeed open areas in two parallel lines down the middle which is the yarn over spot. When you yarn over it is basically an upside down backward looped small letter L. When you are knitting the next row the yarn is coming from the back and over the needle so when you insert your working needle in the front, it is going into the L and lays it open.

The second pattern is that you knit through the back loop into the yarn overs and this twists the yarn in the opposite direction and keeps the L closed and prevents the holes. Now that this has been slowly explained to me it makes perfect sense. (thunk self on forehead). So your choices are if you want the open spaces or not.

I have been crocheting for over 40 years and can read a pattern and see it in my mind visually in 3D. For knitting, unfortunately I am so new that I am still at “just follow directions” and then finding out how things turn out. Questions like this one are really good to start visualizing what happens in knitting.

Traditional Danish Tie Shawl

I am posting this on the Hadley Fiber Arts Guild page too since that was where I received the answer.