This is a time-indexed transcript of TECHknitting’s “SLIDE-BY” technique for FOUR NEEDLE DOUBLE KNITTING.
Video link, You Tube video of SLIDE-BY technique (6 minutes)
Post link, link to TECHknitting text post about four-needle double knitting.
The video is subtitled in English. By going to the “settings” (gear) button of the You-tube, then selecting closed caption option, you can see the English subtitles, or choose to translate the subtitles into many languages: easier to follow. However, if translating subtitles is unavailable for your language, translate this time-indexed transcript instead.
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0:00
Hi, this is TECHknitter here and I’m showing a trick for FOUR NEEDLE DOUBLE KNITTING. And, this particular trick is called “slide by.” This is the first of a series of two videos. The second video shows a trick called “picking.”
0:18
Slide-by, which is this video here is a trick for four-needle— you see there are four needles here—four needle double knitting when you’re making blocks of color such as what I’m making here . You can see that there are six stitches, and six stitches, and so on and so forth. And that makes these blocks of color.
0:41 The other video about “picking” is what you use when you have frequent color changes, so not blocks of color, but frequent color changes, such as this row which is two, two, two, two, two, or even in this row here which is where you have some rows which are one, one, one, one, one, one. And, that is the different video which is called “picking.”
1:06
This one here is called “slide by,” and let me break down for you what I am doing here.
Again, I said this is four-needle double knitting, and so this trick involves making a double knitting fabric using four needle tips, which are attatched to two cable needles.
1:24
For blocks of color, this is by far the fastest double knitting technique, and it results in the best tension because stitches that are next to one another in the FABRIC are actually next to one another AS YOU CREATE them. If you know about “regular (classic) double knitting, you realize that is not the case with regular double knitting.
1:45
So, this is an advantage here.
Now, the back needles hold the purl stitches in this four needle double knitting trick. And, that’s always how you create the back fabric of a double knitting, these stitches are purled from the back. Purled from the back means knit on the front, so it’s a smooth stockinette fabric on this (back) side.
2:07
The front fabric is knit from the front, so it is stockinette, as are all fabrics which are knit from the front.
Now, the slide-by technique relies on the fact that when you have cables, the cable part—if you park your stitches on the cables, the work will be very flexible.
2:28
So you can see that my next part here in the pattern is to knit these six stitches, and because I’m knitting, I’m not purling, so I’m SLIDING my back needles out the work. As I said, when the work is all on the cables, when the back work is all (slid to) the cables, you can see that the work is very flexible, so it’s going to be very easy for me to simply knit, as if this was ordinary every-day knitted fabric.
3:00
I’m just going to knit these six stitches as a (color) block in front. The only trick here is, you do have to pull up a little to bridge the gap where the yarn is going from this back stitch to this front stitch, from this back stitch to this front stitch. So, you have to pull up a little bit, and after you’ve done this trick for a while, the tension part becomes automatic.
3:25
So, now I’ve finished with the six front stitches, so now, I—my next step is to purl these six purple stitches in the back, so I’m pulling now the front needles out of the work, and setting the back needles into position, so that the (back) yarn is no longer on the cable, but is in fact on the tips.
3:56
And again, with the front stitches on the cable here, the work is very flexible, and it’s super easy to just go ahead and purl as if it were ordinary fabric, to purl these last six, these back—I should say these back six stitches.
4:14
So, there’s my purple. Now I’m on the front again.
Now, you know, as you can imagine, dragging needles in and out of the work gets kind of old, so, once you get—once you’ve gone up the learning curve a little bit, you really don’t have to yank the needles all the way out.
4:30
Just kind of pull them up to give yourself some flexibility is good, but you don’t have to actually pull them all the way out, as I'll demonstrate now.
4:43
So here is the purple. so it’s um, one, two, three, four, five, six, and because the needles are pulled up, either somewhat up or all the way up, the back uh—the needle not in use, in this particular case, the back one—the stitches can’t fall off of it. The needles, being pulled up, act as stitch holders.
5:15
One last thing I want to leave you with is that the yarn not in use always strands between the two green—I’m sorry, it always strands between the two LEFT needles.
5:28
So, this green yarn—the one that was out of use, but now is in use—had been left stranded, and now I simply go back to where it was dropped off, and off I go with my slide-by technique.
5:47
Thank you very much for watching, and, that’s all there is to it.
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This is the first of two videos about four-needle double knitting. The second in the series is called "picking," there is a time-indexed translation for that video also.
