How to Knit Backwards

11 minutes ago

3 min read

"Knit backwards? You mean purl?" Nope!! I mean knit backwards. A skill you'll wish you learned sooner for sure!

WHY LEARN IT

Those charts of lace or cables in a cardigan? No need to purl across on the wrong side for hundreds of stitches. Keep the RS facing and never purl or flip your work again. Knitting an entrelac sweater? Knitting backwards will save your time and sanity indeed on a project like that! Besides that, it's a cool new skill to learn, you never know when it may come in handy to you. And since most knitters hate purling, this will be the answer to your woes.

WHAT IS KNITTING BACKWARDS

With normal knitting, your working needle is your right needle, and you work on from right to left. When you knit backwards, it's opposite of that. Your left needle is the working needle and you work from left to right. It can be tricky to learn, but it just takes practice.

Normal - Right to Left
Backwards - Left to Right

LOOK AT YOUR STITCHES

Now all knitting, you want to knit in the leading leg. So when you look at your next stitch - it's a loop over the needle, right? So it has two legs, and one of those legs is going to look for forward/in front of the other. That is the leading leg.

leading leg in knitting is the leg in front of the other

HOW TO KNIT A STITCH

When you knit backwards, the leading leg is in the back, so you want to insert your needle into the back of the next stitch.

knit backwards by inserting the left needle into the back of the next sts

Then you want to yarn over the left needle, bringing your yarn from the left, over the top of the needle, and around to the back.

wrap the yarn around your left needle counter clockwise

Then, like a normal knit stitch, you bring that loop up with your left needle and drop it off the right stitch.

pull up a sts and drop it off the right needle

Then repeat this process to keep knitting backwards!

IT JUST TAKES PRACTICE

Honestly, the hardest part about this is figuring out how to use your left hand to wrap the yarn around the needle - at least for me that was the hardest part. It took some fidgeting around for me to get something that felt right.

When I knit normally, from right to left, I knit continental. I hold the yarn in my left hand and I 'pick' it. When I knit backwards, I still hold the yarn in my left hand. But instead I knit continental - I 'throw' my yarn instead of 'picking' it.

GIVE IT A SHOT

Try it out on a small swatch first to figure out how to hold and work the yarn. Then when you feel like you have it down, try it on your next project! Let me know in the comments below how it went for you and if you'll keep knitting backwards or continue to purl instead.

If the picture tutorial wasn't clear, I have a YouTube Short Video showing you how to do it!

Thank you so much for reading, I hope you liked this article. If you found it helpful, give it a like! If you have questions, comment them below!

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