Hm… After work today I was revisiting Annie Modesitt’s information on combined knitting. When I looked at it last year, I’d come to the conclusion that her method matched what I did, but I obviously didn’t pay enough attention! Taking only the knit stitch, since that’s what I wrote about and photographed already, the “cloth needle” holding the previous row has S-stitches on it. So far so good, but the other needle has Z-stitches! She scoops/wraps from the opposite direction, so the orientation of the stitch switches as the stitches go from one needle to the other. Fascinating!

So that means that if you are working in the round, not all knit stitches can be worked the same way, right? Must do more research… make samples… take pictures!

Apparently, I don’t do combination knitting after all, but S-knitting. Both Western and Continental are Z-knitting, and combination knitting has aspects of both S and Z. Eastern knitting? In Eastern knitting, which hand holds the yarn? Does it matter (as in Western vs Continental)?

Centaurea in bloom

An unpredicted side-effect of having this blog: I’ve been inspired to figure out what things are as they bloom (after 3 years of looking at them and thinking about figuring out what they are). This one: Centaurea montana, called mountain bluet or perennial cornflower.

Welcome!

I’ve been doing stuff with string for quite some time, and describing it to others online since 1996 or so at Phiala’s String Page.

I also do some science and write some fiction.

I’m Phiala most places on the internet.