question about purling

[nonniemous]

inchainz  and I have been discussing this randomly, and I've been searching for an answer in all my knitting books, but I haven't found one.  So I come here, to the knitting group, fount of all wisdom re: knitting, and I ask:

When purling, if the first leg of the stitch is behind the needle, do you go through that instead, or do you always default to the leg that's in front of the needle?  Seems to me it would make things twist funny.  I know when I knit, I go through the first leg, front or back.  Purling front leg only can also result in a twist, so ...

Yeah, okay.  This is probably a really stupid question.  But it's itching at me!  Anyone have any wisdom to share?

Comments

[nonniemous]

Okay, I do the "knit two together" (and actually knit three together") in this manner for the left leaning decreases already. And to compensate on the right leaning decreases, I would go in back against the stitch, left to right, instead of right to left. No wonder they were twisting funny. Reseating the stitch makes a whole lot more sense.

I honestly don't want to change how I purl; my current method is fast and looks just like my knit stitches, (when I don't get that odd twist in them); when I've tried changing it they come out tighter and smaller. But if I pay attention to the rest of this, I should be able to keep going the way I'm going.

Thank you EVER so much for all this! You've been fantastically helpful, and explained something I couldn't even articulate. ♥♥♥

[sedge]

You're quite welcome!

Having learned about combination knitting, I've learned to recognize the signs. :D But you're right, it's pretty uncommon for people to know about it.