Knitting Backwards

Last Saturday morning, I was sitting around waiting for a son to arrive, and I decided to do something which has intrigued me for some time. I taught myself how to knit backwards.

Knitting backwards sounds like a good idea for those little projects where you are knitting and purling over just a few stitches. I cast on 10 stitches, and played around with it for a while and got something like this video from the Knitwitch. (Here is hoping the video thing works)


Remember how I said sort of?

Because I hold my yarn in my other hand, a holdover from being gauge comfortable with crochet technique, I had to sort it out by myself. The results look the same, a perfectly knit stitch, only the placement of needles and possibly the direction I need to wrap change. If I was a smart videophile, I would have video of myself knitting backwards. Then even I could see what the heck I did to get there.

Please note the lack of such video. I am no videophile. Search the net. someone will be demonstrating it.

There are dozens of how to videos on YouTube, 17 if you search using knitting backwards. Some of them don't seem to be knitting, but the search results in enough that surely some of this is going to help.

If you can't find a teacher or a friend who knows how to knit, you can have someone show you via the Internet. Knitwitch is a video maker I particularly like. She has a very long list of things on knitting over at YouTube.

Now I just have to come up with a reason to use the thing so I can become smooth and speedy with it. Though, before I worry about smooth and speedy backwards knitting, I should probably figure out the speedy part going the regular direction.