Twining in the Round - Introduction

I am pretty much a self taught knitter. Books, online tutorials and much trial and error. When I first began two-color knitting, I guess I was doing it the "wrong" way. Instead of holding one strand of yarn in my left hand and one in my right, I twisted the two strands around each other with one hand.

Little did I know that this method is actually a traditional Scandinavian technique known as twined knitting (tvåändsstickning in Swedish and tvebandsstrikking in Norwegian). I'd like to say that this method just felt natural to me because of my Nordic heritage, but maybe that's just in my head.

On one side of your work, twined knitting looks just like plain, old stockinette. On the other side, the twisted strands become a design element and you get a beautifully textured pattern.

To get an idea about how twined knitting works, here's a quick video so you can see the twisting and untwisting motion of the working yarn strands in action.