Double Knitting Workshop

We had the May meeting of the Huddersfield Knitting & Crochet Guild on Thursday - a workshop on double knitting by Sarah of Wessenden Woollies,  who is one of our members.   Double knitting,  as in the technique for producing a double-sided stocking stitch fabric, rather than double knitting yarn.  (Although in fact the recommended yarn was DK, so it was double knitting in double knitting.  (Double double knitting?)) 

Sarah had created a pattern for us - a "Love Owl" coaster.  I started mine again after the workshop, because I had made a mistake right at the beginning and had an extra stitch, so the first few rows of the owl were off by one.  I also wanted to try a different cast on - Sarah had shown us a two-colour version of long tail cast on, but a two-colour version of alternate cable cast on also works quite well.    The two colour cast-off that Sarah showed us is extremely neat  - a very nice braided effect. But my tension isn't very even - it's hard to keep all the stitches the same size when you're switching yarns from the back to the front of the fabric all the time.   

The other side of a double knit fabric is the same design with the colours reversed.  A light motif on a dark background looks much less like an owl I think - more like some kind of weird monster.    

Thanks to Sarah for a great workshop.   She has blogged about it here - you can see that her coaster is much more even than mine.