In pursuit of perfect ribbing
Anyone else's ribbing look neater on the wrong side than the right side?
My purls are f-ing beautiful on the wrong side due to the little yarn back tug I give them right after working a purl (I knit continental). It pulls the extra slack out of the stitch and is a trick I picked up from VeryPink Knits when I first started knitting. But it means that I have the opposite problem of a lot of continental knitters where my purls are smaller than my knits. In ribbing, the adjacent purls pull open my knit stitches, making my knits look bloated and laddery and making me die on the inside...
Yes, I use smaller needles for ribbing. I’ve also tried combination knitting and doing the ribbing flat before joining in the round with no better results. Working the ribbing flat was actually worse for me since BOTH sides ended up messy when alternating the purls side-to-side every time I turned my work. Normally, I resort to a twisted rib so everything is being pulled closed instead of open, but I do miss the full, squishy look of a traditional rib. How on earth do you get beautiful, even ribbing without machine knitting?
Lately I've been thinking about using a German Short Row (or would it be half a short row??) to change direction after completing the ribbing so that I can turn my work inside out! Something like:
Work ribbing in the round to desired length, work last stitch of ribbing as usual, turn work and turn inside out, yarn to front, slip last worked stitch over to right needle, pull working yarn over top of right needle until both legs of stitch are on top of needle, maintain tension and work around, knit both legs of short row stitch as one stitch when you get back to it and then just keep going with pattern from there.
Thoughts, feelings, cries of anguish? Has anyone tried it? Am I overthinking this? What do you do to get ribbing that doesn’t make you cringe??
