Hi,
I am just getting started on a French Girl’s top down cropped cardigan called Fantine. I have come across something that I have never seen before in my short 2 1/2 year’s of knitting. The pattern calls for LCS and RCS. The pattern gives instructions but they make no sense to me and I can usually figure things out. I have searched through my pretty extensive knitting library and can find nothing. I did a search on the web but really didn’t come up with anything to help me. Can anyone explain to me exactly how to do these stitches? I saw that some others had posted similar questions on this forum but I didn’t see any explanations posted. Thanks for your time.
If I’m thinking correctly, a right cross would be where you slip a stitch to a cable needle and hold it in back, knit one, then purl from the cable needle.
The left cross would be holding a stitch to the front, purling one, and then knitting the held stitch.
Hi!
I have made this sweater a couple of times now. Let me see if I can explain the way I did these stitches; which are, by the way, decorative stitches for the edging around the neck and down the front edges of the sweater. For the LCS, insert the right needle into the back of the second stitch on the left needle and put the working yarn around as if to knit. Pull the yarn up through the stitch as knitting but do not put onto the right needle as usual; insert the right needle, which now hold the knitted second stitch into the front of the FIRST stitch on the left needle as if to knit and pull the yarn around it as knitting and then transfer BOTH stitches to the left needle. You have knitted them both, one from the back and one from the front, and if you did this correctly you will end up with two knitted stitches on your right needle. You are just knitting them “out of order” and knitting the second stitch in the back and not the usual way in the front. Is that clear at all??? The RCS is just the same idea except you knit the second stitch on the left needle from the front and then the first stitch in the usual manner. This, in essence, crosses the second stitch over the first one also. After you do a few of these you will see the pattern of it and how it makes this sort of “bumpy” border that is really very pretty. You are just knitting out of order and one from the front and one from the back. I wish I could show you!! If you have the original number (2) on the right needle then you have done it right; you don’t want to add a stitch thus throwing off you cast on amount. Hope that helped. The sweater is really cute and once you finally get this it makes sense.
Sop 1
aka Susan in NC
I apologize, I found a gross error in my instructions! You transfer BOTH stitches to the RIGHT needle just like regular knitting; NOT to the left needle. You just put them both on the right needle after you have knitted them both out of order. That process crosses them. So sorry to further add to your confusion. Once again; you knit them out of order off of the left needle onto the right needle (English style knitting) as you normally do with plain old knitting.
Susan
OK, that would be right and left twists.
Thanks so much for your help. I still have a question though. What about the loops that are hanging there after you drop the two original stitches? Since I am on the 1st row, when I tried tugging on them it unraveled my cast-on row.
You don’t drop them off, you just knit them out of order. After you knit the second and then the first stitch, you’ll have 2 stitches on your right needle instead of the normal one, and will slide the two off the left needle as normal–not drop them.
Dropping them off the needle is how you take them off like you do when you knit them normally. They’re not loops because you’ve already made a stitch out of them.
I thank you profusely!
I think I am getting this now. Will let you know how it goes later when I have the chance to sit down with my knitting.
Im new at this. I dont even know if im doing this right. I need to know what to do on a left cross over stitch when it says to wrap the yarn around the needle twice on the purls.