Tripleknitting
I had been going to write a book review for my regular blog post this week, but those plans got put aside when I saw a tweet this morning from Karie Westermann, who is at a nifty conference about knitting. She mentioned tripleknitting, and provided enough information to lead me to this blog post about it by Ruth Churchman.
My jaw dropped.
Tripleknitting is like doubleknitting, but instead of two interlocking layers of knitting, there are three. She worked out a way to do it after looking at some examples by “Alexander Crum Brown (1838-1922), an Edinburgh scientist…He used the process of making these models to explore how interpenetrating layers work together.”
Do go have a look at the blog post. It describes both how she worked out how to do this knitting herself, and also links to photos of Crum Brown’s work.
I don’t think I’ll ever take up this kind of knitting myself, but I find its existence delightful.
This is so weird! It also isn’t too practical, either, is it? Or maybe it is? At any rate, you have stumbled upon something that fascinates!
No, not really practical, but it’s very interesting! And if you’re a topologist, you might learn something from trying it.
Thanks for the link Trail Naomi, my son will adore this, he learned crochet for the math modeling potential, then took of knitting to sooth his train commute.
Excellent!
It makes me wish I had the patience to knit a whole blanket that way, essentially quilted and self stuffing. Imagine how warm it would be. Now, imagine how much of a nightmare it would be to knit that on three circulars at once…
Yes, to all of that!
So interesting! The swatches have me imagining washcloths – so absorbent but could dry quickly. I also like that there is another stellar use for knitting through the back stitch!
Thanks for sharing my blog post. I initially thought it was like double-knitting, just with a 3rd layer, but in fact, you knit the same colour onto the same colour, and pull the stitches through to the correct layer. There is a tutorial linked to on the blog with videos if anyone fancies having a go at a sample swatch.
Thank you! It’s quite fascinating.