All twisted up: Left-leaning Twisting Stitches

About this time last year, I published my Parallel Lines pattern (if you weren’t reading back then, you can click the Patterns tab in the navigation bar above this post and download it). Quite a few people added it to their Ravelry queues—not too many people have actually knit it. Not to worry, I know all about adding things to one’s queue and then sort of… forgetting about them? I have almost 500 things in my queue (the new Twist Collective certainly did me no favors); I may get around to knitting half of them in my lifetime.

Anyway, around the time that I published the pattern, I also made mention of doing a tutorial on how to do the left twisting stitches. So here we are, a year later (sorry about that), with a tutorial on how to work a left-leaning twisted stitch pattern.

The first thing to realize is that we’re basically working the teeniest, tiniest of cables in this stitch. Cables are made by knitting stitches out of order, right? So in this stitch, we’re working two stitches out of order, or if you are familiar with cable-knitting terminology, it’s a C2F—we’re taking the first stitch and putting it “on hold,” if you will, in front of the work while we knit the second stitch. The catch here is that we’re twisting both stitches, so you’re working through the back loop.

Pictures might help, yes? (I apologize in advance if these photos aren’t the greatest; I did this on my own, no professional photographer to help this time.)

Here we have our teeny swatch. Say hello, teeny swatch!

Hello!

I’m going to knit to the point that I’m going to work the twisted stitches, and then I’m going to take my right needle, move it behind the first stitch on the left needle…,

…and then knit into the back loop of the second stitch, pulling the needle and yarn through like I normally would for a ktbl.

I can’t slide the stitch off, though, because there’s still that pesky first stitch to deal with. Now I’m going to knit the first stitch on the left needle through the back loop, being extra careful to not also knit through the second stitch.

Sometimes, it’s kind of a pain in the behind to knit into the back loop of the first stitch without also snagging the second stitch, so what I’ll do is I’ll bring the right needle purlwise through the front of the first stitch…

…and then gently slide the left needle back and swing the right needle over the left needle, so that I’m working through the back loop of the first stitch and not snagging the second stitch.

Once I’ve worked both stitches individually through the back loops, I slide both stitches from the left needle off, and voilà, a baby cable with a twist.

Questions? Comments? Tips or tricks? A few of my friends tested this for me, and my friend Ashley won last year’s contest and knit the scarf with her winnings; if anyone reading this has any helpful hints, please share in the comments!