Saturday, May 16, 2009

Interesting knitting techniques

Some years ago there was a Japanese book out, "Nordic Knitting; 10 Amazing Techniques". About a year later the second book in the line came out. "Nordic Knitting; 7 Miraculous Techniques".

The first book presents
Korsnäs tapestry crochet and fur tape from Finland,
Domino knitting and i-cord from Denmark
entrelac from Sweden
"Kihnu vits" and Estonian spiral from Estonia
Tubular stitch (double knitting), bead knitting and "crown" (short row serrated edge) from Norway.

Now, all these techniques are more or less universal, the Finns knit just as much Kihnu's bands as in Kihnu, and the fur tape is more Swedish to me than Finnish, but that doesn't matter much.

The second book is more about interesting "tricks" - like what can be done with short row knitting (now with the Danish name, "vendepinne") and modular knitting.

It has shortrow zigzag, frills and spiraling circles, "rose", which is cable knitted "in air", carter stitch socks knitted sideways in a long strip that is then sewn together into a sock; dropped stitch and pearl necklace; moebius cowl and chain made by knitting stockinette in round around each other - stockinette stitch will curl itself, and when knit in rounds it will turn itself around itself into a pretty bangle. To me the most interesting things are the "Four Knitted Rectangles" and playing around with buttonholes.


Now... I'm not too fond of the patterns in these books, but I'd take them anyway, even though I know all these techniques - and a couple more...

Someone reviewing the books said that if there ever is Nordic Knitting III in the series, she'll take it immediately. I wonder what would be in that then... I think they need to have stranded knitting and steeks; Viking cables that go round; twined knitting; Sapmi aurora borealis color knitting... bohus knitting...Delsbo jackets, felted with "fur" on the sleeves... estonian roositud
Perhaps some more modular knitting for the Danish :-)

I like this dropped-stitches-and-cable pattern :-)

2 comments:

Fiber Babble said...

What an interesting post! I clicked through on most of the links you provided. I immediately started drooling over the Viking cables (is "Viking" always capitalized?). The other techniques are interesting? Educational? I'm going to see what else I can find about "roositud".

Thanks for sharing!

Ketutar said...

Oh dear... I'm Finnish, and we don't capitalize much anything, so I wouldn't know... The grammar says it is never capitalized, just as pirate, gladiator, buss driver or king, but when used as an adjective (Viking knitting) or to refer to the ethnic group, then it should be capitalized. So - something new learned LOL

I call it "rose inlay" and in this book about Estonian folk crafts it's translated into "rose pattern".
Interesting thing here is that the boundweave is called rosengång in Swedish (rosepath).