A Whole Lotta Lumps . . . er, Knitting Rakes

(With apologies to Pete Puma in the 1952 Bugs Bunny cartoon "Rabbit's Kin".)

The flurry over those little scarflets gives me an easy Tuesday-with-a-cold blog topic.

From top to bottom,
-metal potholder loom modified into a double knitting rake;
-adjustable rake I designed using wire brads on 1/4" centers;
-scarf rake from an antique store;
-oval Panel/Combo loom from CinDWoodcrafts.

Although I would not use a single strand of dishcloth cotton on this gauge of knitting loom, this is what the "e-wrap" looks like.

Another caveat: I don't cast on like this, either, because it comes out too loose and floppy. If you are looking for instructions, Isela at DALooms has a whole page available here.

In this photo, I am trying to show the return e-wrap. Below the top row of pegs, on the first pass, the left-leaning (\) diagonal of the X is on top as I loop around the peg. If you look closely, on the second pass, the right-leaning (/) diagonal is on top.

(By "X", I mean the place where the yarn crosses itself below the peg, over the center gap between the two rakes.)

The shift from left-leaning-on-top to right-leaning-on-top is what creates the similarity to Barbara Walker's "plaited basket stitch".

If you've done twisted stitches on needles where you wanted to pair right-leaning and left-leaning twists, you know that one twist is easy and the other is harder: you either have to wrap the needle backwards, or you have to take the stitch off, put it back on backwards, and then knit it twisted.

But on a double rake, it's not just easy, it's almost automatic. What would be hard on a double rake is getting all the twists to run the same way.

Does that make it any clearer?