Some of the ladies had to restart their projects a few times when knitting on circular needles. The reason for this is that when knitting on the round you are knitting on the right side of the fabric all the time. If you are a Combined Knitter (like most of us at the knitting club) you have to make sure not to twist the stitches when knitting. Depending on your particular method of knitting, the stitches will be presented on the needle differently. The idea is to concentrate on the actual stitch "loop" being careful that the "legs" of the stitch are opened up and not crossed. If you twist the stitch, you will see that the "legs" create an X at the bottom of the stitch.
UNTWISTED STITCH:
TWISTED STITCH:
Although there are times when crossing or twisting stitches are done intentionally, in the case of the israeli hats, it created an undesirable result. Twisted stitches are tighter than standard stitches and they create a fabric that is stiffer than plain knitting. This can ruin the drape of a sweater and it can also prevent a piece of knitting from felting because felting requires loose stitches that move around during the felting process.
This is how a basic stockinette stitch looks when knitted normally:
This is what basic stockinette stitch will look if you twist the stitches:
For instructional videos further explaining this, go to: Knitting Help.com. Watch the video on Combined Knitting.
Another way to avoid having the twisted stitches is to change your method of knitting to the Continental Knitting method. This method is very similar to Combined Knitting only the purling is done a little differently. An easy instructional video is also shown at Knitting Help.com . I personally like the Combined method because I find the purling much faster and easier to execute. So what I do when knitting with circular needles is I untwist the stitches as I shown above rather than changing the way a I grab the yarn when knitting.
Better late than never... happy knitting
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