invisble double knit seams

(for info on the basics of double knitting, check out my blog post here)

once you get started double knitting, you’ll realize pretty quick that long tail cast offs and basic knit bind offs are extremely obtrusive to the rest of your beautiful knitting. and since few books and websites have been written on this subject, it is pretty hard to find alternatives to the basic dk cast on and bind off.

stitchdiva lists one alternative for each, basically suggesting that you cast on with one colour and then kfb each stitch to make the two sides of the work. i’ve seen this discussed (in the yahoo dk group mostly) as the way most people do each of these and i’m having a hard time using google to find anyone with a different way. this way does work fine but i keep thinking that there has to be a better technique.

what’s been floating ahead in my mind recently is doing a figure-8 or provisional cast on and then grafting the top seam. this way, the work would be fluid– top to bottom, side to side, without any overflow of the cc to make your cast on look messy on the mc side. so i just swatched it and… yeah! it works. it’s actually sort of beautiful (one colour floating into another effortlessly). even if someone has thought of this before, i’m pretty damn proud to have figured it out.

my happy little swatch (ok so the knitting part is sort of messy, we can’t all be perfect. the gauge is way off– i usually use a size 6 with simply soft and all i had in front of me were 8’s. i’m lazy.):

click photos to enlarge

MC:

CC:

figure 8 cast on:

kitchener stitch bind off:

i’m going to work another dk hat and try this as the bind off, and if it works (stretch-wise) i’ll add an errata note suggesting the use of this method over the one written in the pattern. i’m also going to write up a tutorial that shows how to apply this cast on and bind off to double knitting as soon as DH wants to play photographer.

Tags: bind off, cast on, dk, double knit, double knitting, grafting, kitchener, knit, knitting