Category: Weaving

I discovered recently ‘knit weave’ (you can see pictures when following the links).
I like it! ;-)

Knit weave is mostly worked on knitting machines by laying a thread on the stitches. This thread is then trapped in the stitches and can be seen sometimes on the front side, sometimes on the back side of the item.
I found this interesting and thought that it should be possible to do this by hand.
I didn’t find very much (see links), therefore I’m reporting my own experience here.
Just a note: ‘knit weave’ can be translated in German by ‘Webstricken’, but when googling Webstricken you get quite different results: there are knitting needles where you can thread in an extra thread that will be worked in your item when knitting. But it looks different from ‘my’ knit weave.

That’s what you do:
In principle you carry an extra thread with you that will be laid on the front side and the back side of your work, alternately. That’s like weaving: the weft will be brought over and under.
I suggest not to let the extra thread lay on one side longer than four stitches. The float will get too long and your fingers can get caught.
Always check the extra thread tension to prevent it from hanging or contracting the knitted stitches.
You can see best what I’m talking about when checking the following examples:

My first item.
I knitted the yellow item in a rib pattern two knit-two purl to prevent it from curling.
While knitting I carried a red thread that I always laid two stitches on the front side and two stitches on the back side of my work.
The back side looks similar.

These are both patterns I used for my first item.
A filled square means: ‘lay the thread on the front side of your work’, an empty square means therefore ‘lay the thread on the back side of your work’.

(To download simply click on the image with the right mouse button and use something like ‘Save image as…’.)

My second item: This time I used kitchener stitch and I was pleasantly surprised to see that the item nearly don’t curl when knit woven.
Note: I’ve been told that this is not the kitchener stitch but the stockinette stitch.
In the end it doesn’t matter which stitch you use (to a certain point ;-)), but I see that I have still lots to learn about the English knitting vocabulary ;-)).

Here the back side: just as with multi-coloured knitting.

That is the diamond pattern I used for my second item.

(The download works in the same way as above.)

Then I wanted to know whether it works with two colours, too.
I think it does ;-))

The item gets however quite thick because of the many yarns.
Besides I’m sure that you can make the whole thing much neater ;-)

So, that is the two-colour pattern.
A square filled with a filled square (eehm…) means: ‘dark blue thread on the front side of the item’, a square filled with an empty square means: ‘light blue thread on the front side of the item’, an empty square means: ‘all extra threads on the back side of the item’.

In the end I just played around with an extra: I knitted the (hmpf!) square from outside to inside in kitchener stitch by knitting three stitches together in the corners in every second row.
I carried the gray extra thread that I laid on the front side every second row shifted for one stitch.

Unfortunately I blocked the square made from acrylic yarn too hot, that ‘s why I can’t get it square anymore ;-(

Here you can see the back side of the square.
The pattern is inverted and look also nice.

What I want to try next:

• In the links you can find photos combining knit weave and lace knitting, I like this.
• I want to carry a funky yarn once to see if one can still recognize the patterns.
• I haven’t tried yet whether you can carry more than two extra threads.

Links:
Short Description ‘Knit-woven Effects’

Photos of machine knit woven pieces (with lace knitting)
Photos of machine knit woven pieces

Knit-Weave Patterns

A short movie about the technique that she uses there to weave in fur yarn => look there for ‘Hand knit-weave technique’

Meine kleine Buchkritik – My little book review: Kathleen Kinder, ‘The technique of Knitweave’) (German and English): actually I refer to the pictures because the reviewed book is about machine knit weave