Two Strands in a Twist

Twined Knitting and Its Maine Cousin

Mrs. Blake’s fishermen’s double-knit mittens from coastal Maine are a transitional thing between two-colored stranding, pull-up knitting, fulled knitting, and twined knitting. They are stranded, but only in one color. They pull-up, but not entirely. And while made with two strands of one color, but they aren’t twined. Perhaps they are a thing apart, but they lead into twined knitting because, like most twined knitting, they are knit with two strands of the same color.

Twined knitting creates a firm, even fabric with a little stretch both length- and width-wise. The stitches pull together even more than in the pull-up technique and twist slightly to one side.

Twined knitting, called tvåändssticking (two-end knitting) in Swedish and tveband (twi-knitting) in Norwegian, is knitting alternating strands of the inside and outside ends of a single ball of yarn, carrying both strands in the same position. Instead of carrying one strand ahead and the other behind as in stranded color patterns, both are picked up from the same position throughout one round, or throughout the garment. This twists the floats together—twining them—on the wrong side, so that the purl side looks as if a piece of matching twine were laid between the rows of purl stitches.

An old technique, twined knitting was lost to general public knowledge for centuries, although it continued to be knitted into mittens for forestry workers throughout the mountains of the Scandinavian peninsula. It was rediscovered about 25 years ago, first in Dalarna, Sweden, by Dalarnas Museum curators Birgitta Dandanell and Ulla Danielsson, and later in the mountains near Lillehammer, Norway, by Norsk Husflid regional consultant Torbjórg Gauslaa.

Twined knitting existed as a purely folk idiom for about half a millenium. Knitting experts at Copenhagen’s National Museet think that early northern European knitters freely used various techniques that have since vanished (including inlaid patterns and twined knitting), much as we use ribbing or garter stitch for edging, or two-colored stranding today. Some, including twined knitting, may have dropped out of usage with the advent of the German technique of holding the yarn in the left hand and picking it off with the right needle—a speedy technique, but one that makes twined knitting all but impossible.

In the parts of Norway and Sweden where twined knitting is done today, knitters commonly hold their knitting in the old way, and carry their yarn on their right pekefinger (index finger.) For the many American, British, and French knitters who still knit this way, twined knitting is a snap. For Northern Europeans who learned in school to pick the yarn from their left index, twined knitting has been a challenge.

Twined knitting was once used on edges meant to lie flat or for controlled stretchiness (much as we use garter stitch today)—along neck and bodice edges, on sleeves, and at the tops of socks or the wrists of mittens. For centuries it persisted in the mountains of Sweden and Norway, in both cotton and woolen mittens, gloves, caps, and jacket sleeves, valued for its firm, slightly flexible fabric, its density and, particularly in Sweden, as a design element.

Swedish twined-knitters decorate the knit surface by bringing one strand forward and purling alternate stitches with the purl strand remaining in front. The combination of the purl stitches and the purl floats are used to form striking geometric patterns against the smoothly twined-knit ground.

When rediscovered by Dalarnas Museum, twined knitting was used primarily for mittens and small projects made in one color with embroidered or knit-in accents in another color to emphasize such structural elements as thumb gores and cast-ons. Many knitters knew a little about it, but the museum was lucky to find one woman, Elsie Jonsson of Sollerön, who had not only the whole technology but also the vocabulary to go with it.

In Norway, regional Norsk Husflid consultant Torbjørg Gauslaa found women who still twined-knit work mittens for their husbands and other forestry workers. At Dandanell’s request, Torbjórg sent the museum a Norwegian twined-knitted mitten. They wrote back to her immediately: “Why did you send it inside out?”

Torbjórg replied: “In Norway, we call that right side out.” The Norwegian twined-knitting tradition has the purl side out and none of the surface decoration of the Swedish mittens, but plays with variations of twist, alternations of knit and purl rounds. And the Norwegian mittens are lined—with various techniques of shagging, or with a long duplicate stitch called “napping.” “The women don’t consider the mittens finished until they’re nappade,” Torbjórg told me while teaching me this wonderful old form of knitting.

Although twined knitting is not a traditional form in the United States or Canada—did all Scandinavian immigrants come from the coast?—it fits in well with our national taste and our climate, so I have included a Norwegian twined-knitted mitten and a wrister that utilize the technique, while trying earnestly not to step on the toes of Birgitta Dandanell, Ulla Danielsson who wrote Twined Knitting), and Ingebjørg Gravjord, author of Votten i Norsk Tradisjon [Mittens and Gloves in Norwegian Tradition].