*To knit the netting, you need a thinner yarn, and I've already told you that the yarn I recommend is called sock reinforcement yarn. As I have worked out the details of duplicate stitch on netting, below are the tools which pass the test of Sheinman's law. Many years ago, a brilliant carpenter by the last name of Sheinman told me "if the work is too hard, you're using the wrong tool." This seemingly simple precept has guided me over the years: when things get too hard in knitting, there must be another tool out there to make it easier. If you look back at the left side of the photo, you'll note the black border being worked in duplicate stitch using a sewing needle and a cut length of yarn: this is the set up for a new color-block which will be duplicate stitched right next to the orange block. Each duplicate-stitched color-block is separated from the next by a duplicate-stitched 1-column-wide black border.Īt the right of the photo, you can see a black-bordered orange square of duplicate stitch. At the end, I duplicate stitched squares in a color progression all the way around the hat covering the netting. To set up the work, I knit the ribbing, then two rows of black, then five rows of netting, then two more rows of black, then the rest of the hat according to the pattern (which, to be frank, I made up as I went along). The sample hat was an ordinary tam sort of pattern. Although the netting yarn is far thinner than the main fabric, it is worked on the same needles at the same gauge as the main fabric. Netting is simply stockinette fabric knit in a very thin, very tough yarn called sock-reinforcement yarn. Well, it took a while and a bunch of experiments, but I have worked out this needlepoint-inspired trick, which I call "duplicate stitching on netting."Īt the left of the photo, labled "netting," you're looking at the still-uncovered part of a stripe which was knit of very thin yarn just above the ribbing of the sample hat in a 5-row-high band.
It struck me that if the guide-fabric was knit thin enough, the finished duplicate stitch would be nearly the same thickness as the surrounding "real" knitting. You know how needlepoint is worked over an open-mesh canvas? And how, despite starting off as a thin, bare canvas, a finished needlepoint project covers the canvas completely? Well, what if you could knit a sort of open-work fabric, very thin, and then afterwords work the duplicate stitch over this thinner fabric, a sort of "needlepoint-izing" trick for duplicate stitch? But, although these tricks certainly improve the situation, they can't solve the fundamental problem that two yarns are being crammed in where one was before.Ī few years ago, I got to thinking. There ARE tricks to minimize this thickness, such as using a thinner yarn, doubled to improve coverage, and those tricks were described in the the last post. But if you're doing it for decorative purposes, like the color-progression band on this sample hat, this 2-into-1 trick yields a tendency to stiff, thick fabric. As a repair on a thinning elbow or sock heel, 2-into-1 is no problem-you WANT to thicken the fabric. What you're doing is cramming TWO yarns in where one yarn was before. So, what is that problem? Well, classic duplicate stitch is where you sew (embroider) a whole new "stitch" duplicating (following exactly) the path of a stitch in the underlying fabric. Today's trick, duplicate stitch on netting, sets out to solve a major problem with classic duplicate stitch.
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