Bottoms ups

One of the few poems I know by heart is by Ogden Nash. I often think of it when we're strolling through the park by the duckpond:

Behold the duck!

It does not cluck.

A cluck it lacks:

It quacks.

It is often fond

of a puddle or a pond

and when it dines or sups

it bottoms ups.

Now you may memorize this soul-juice and think of it when you are watching ducks delve underwater for pondweed.

The bottoms ups of my sweater is the inside of it.

I am normally a throw knitter, meaning that I hold the yarn in my right hand. Each stitch then requires me to sort 0f let go of the needle, pull the yarn over it, and grab hold of the needle again. I knit my first fair isle sweater like that, twisting the stitches around the same way every time. Since I was knitting in the round, the end result was well-twisted wool which I would periodically need to un-twist.

This time through, I am learning how to knit with two strands held in my left hand. I have already learned how to "pick" knit, that is, how to knit by picking up yarn from my left index finger. Since there is no letting go and picking up of the needles, it's faster. Also, since the yarn is just slipped over the finger and not actually gripped in my right hand, it is much looser.

Two strands is trickier. I had tried in the past holding one strand in each hand, (this way they don't get twisted; one is always on the bottom and the other is always on the top) but I found that the variation in my gauge pick-to-throw was a real problem. I could for a while force myself to knit loosely with the right-hand-held yarn but I couldn't keep it up indefinitely.

So this time, I am knitting with both strands held on my left hand. The primary strand goes over my index finger and the secondary strand goes over my rude finger (does that one have a name? It's the longest, anyway). It's going very well. It has taken me some time to get used to the feel of having very very little tension control in the strands (both get wrapped around my baby finger and go under my ring finger, so there is a little bit of grip there, but not a whole lot).

As a result, I think the back of the sweater will reveal my skill building as I progress.