My poor fingers are killing me. Does anyone have any tricks on how to make this easier. I knit continenta and my fingers hurt from trying to manipulate the yarn through my stitches. I’m a pretty average tension knitter, and giving my stitches any more slack is gonna mess up my gauge. I’m just wondering if there are any tricks. Like how when you k2tog you can “wrap” the yarn in continental style to make pulling it through a little easier.
My fingers will love you if you can tell me any.
K2tog tbl shouldn’t be as hard as p2tog tbl. Insert the right needle through the back loops of the first 2 sts, they sometimes want to go in that way anyway. If you’re just doing a left leaning decrease, ssk and sl 1, k1 psso will do it; k2tog tbl twists the sts, these do not.
Its part of a lace pattern and the twist actually forms a pull that gives a recessed detail to the pattern. It looks pretty, but its a bitch to knit. So its not just a decrease, its actually part of the effect.
Why not slip the sts individually tbl and knit tog? Or slip them purlwise, put the left needle in front of the right and wrap the yarn around the right tip. Sort of a twisted ssk, which is what it is.
You know. That might actually work. I’ll try that on my next couple rows and see what I end up with.
I don’t have any problem with k2tog tbl actually, also continental knitter. I guess it comes with practice. When you’ve done the stitch painfully for a few times, it will get easier.
Well I’m finding that I’m doing it a little better now. I tried slipping and that didn’t seem to work. At least in the end it looked different than the other tbls that were done. And I’m a bit obsessive about small details. No one else would be able to tell the difference, but I could and that’d drive me crazy.
So I’ve been getting better with the actual tbls. I’m just finding that I have to twist my right needle differently than I would for a regular k2tog. I find that if I almost invert the needle that it picks up the yarn better.
Yes you have to twist the needle different - k2tog is a right leaning decrease with the left st on top, k2togtbl is a left leaning dec with the right st on top. They’re not a substitute for each other.
I just remembered that it CAN be a PITA, and I have my own little “trick” to master the k2tog tbl…
I pull down the next two stitches (or the knitted fabric in general, close to the next stitches [more like under the second stitch actually]) to make it easier to slip the needle in, then, after wrapping the yarn around the needle, I pull it up with the third finger, so it doesn’t slip off the needle as easily as I pull it through.
But I think everyone has to find their own way of doing it. This helps me tremendously.
(I just did a little test with pencils and some yarn to see how I do it)