Knitting on multiple planes -- no TSA involved

My walkabout knitting is now down to some tutorial pieces to turn this blog back onto the knitting side.

Speaking of tutorials, here's a slick trick I've been playing with to pick up two planes of knitting from one selvedge stitch.

The first photo shows the chain stitch result achieved by slipping the first stitch of each row as if to purl. This part's probably very familiar as is the next bit since picking up stitch through one "leg" of the selvedge stitch is a fairly normal activity.

Next up, with right side facing using either your needle or a crochet hook pick up stitches from the front leg of the selvedge stitch. The photo shows the result on the wrong side of the work.

I've used nylon twine for the demo since it is one of my favourite Summer knitting materials but also because I've a mind to work something up to finally put those vintage purse handles last seen in February 2007 into use.

No, I won't be using the combo of peachy neutral, positively painful pink and Cal Trans orange in the purse project but they work well for illustration.

With the right side of the original work facing me, I've knit a couple of rows with the pink just to show what's going on with the knitting.

The next bit is where things get a bit different.

With the wrong side side facing, pick up stitches from the second leg of the selvedge stitch.

In my example, I've used the orange for this set of stitches.

For my purposes, with the wrong side facing me, I've knit a few rows of the orange stitches.

I've "splayed" the two planes of knitting apart so you can see how the orange and pink stitches orient to each other and the original yarn.

My original plan for this this technique is to create an open ended tube of knitting that can be used to encase a purse handle or some other frame work in the knitting and do either a 3 needle bind off or graft the two sides together.

I can, of course, see many other uses for the technique not the least of which includes doing a solid piece of fabric and lace overlay coming from the same line of stitching (or hmm, maybe that design/construction idea needs a revisit). Clearly, I can use this same technique to pick up from a nice loose cast on or bind off (especially if I've used one that lends itself to a chain edging)

This is a much better solution for some purposes than my cast on 2x the total number of stitches and divide North and South last seen here (and IRL) in September 2006 during the Baby Bobby Bear adventure.

And yes, I have been worrying similar techniques before and since, I am tenacious -- possibly anal or obsessive -- although I prefer to think of myself as tenacious, systematic and thorough.

Whatever the case, I will, no doubt, be poking prodding and posting about this and its sibling variations on a theme for some time to come.

The big knitting project is officially in the non-ambulatory category and tonight I'm planning on trying to work on the next phase without popoki interference -- wish all of us (popoki, me & the project) luck.