on knitting and wearing
In the Minamo pullover, I used Twisted Yarn Over increases, and not just the good old regular Yarn Over (YO) but the Backwards Yarn Over (BYO) too – but knit into the back leg and the front leg respectively to twist the holes shut.
Increasing like this might seem needlessly different when the usual Make One (M1) increases are a lot better known and usually suffice, but I think Twisted Yarn Over increases are better suited for the contiguous set-in sleeve construction.
The tubular cast-on is great for hats, bottom-up sweaters and top-down socks. It’s a neat and tidy cast-on that is extremely stretchy and flows almost invisibly into 1×1 ribbing, and with one extra row to rearrange the stitches it flows wonderfully into 2×2 ribbing too. This version casts on the stitches by alternating the ball-end and tail-end yarns, which helps the recovery and keeps it from pulling out of shape. It’s also known as the two-strand tubular cast-on, long-tail tubular cast-on or Italian cast-on.
If you find that the cast-on is puffy and flaring, try casting on with a smaller needle, or try skipping the two set-up rows altogether. When working the brioche stitch, the set-up rows aren’t necessary as the set-up for brioche itself already involves slipping stitches.
Because everybody loves a gif, I’ve made an animated loop of this cast-on, as well as written instructions with separate loops of each action so you can stare at the motions over and over again. Note: Left-handed knitters, you may skip ahead to mirrored instructions.
Being a left-handed “mirror” knitter is a little more challenging than knitting the conventional, right-handed way, but I think most of us lefties don’t mind trading in a little confusion for the comfort of doing something that feels more natural. After all, we’re accustomed to dealing with lots of tiny, mildly annoying little thing like the perpetual ink on your pinky, having to look around your scissors to actually see what you’re cutting, or carving up one wonky bread slice after the next, and let’s not forget, being called sinister (though let’s be honest, maybe some of us think being spoopy is kind of cool).
As I’m starting to write out some patterns that hopefully will be intelligible to other knitters besides me, I find myself doing the mirror switcharoo backwards, swapping my lefty instructions to the righty way. An overview of exactly what it is that that needs switching and what just stays the same seemed like a good idea, so for my own reference as well as for any fellow lefties out there, I decided to put together this list of what to do when following a regular knitting pattern as a mirror knitter.
