Today’s endless supply of online information has fed my constant appetite for new techniques. Exploring these techniques resulted in my creating many new stitch patterns, leading to my development of a whole new principle of knitting – Distitch (DS).
It is difficult to invent something original: there really is nothing new under the sun! In fact, there are many “new” things that had already been discovered in the past, so I searched for evidence of my “new technique” in books and on the Internet.
So far I’ve found:
- The famous Twice-knit method. It has a very similar principle – each stitch is worked twice – first together with the preceding, and then with the following stitch. However, twice knitting is made in the row, horizontally, not vertically as for Distitch. The Big Herringbone pattern is the most spectacular example of this method (1)
- Bugle cord – identical to one crochet chain DS (2)
- Embroidery stitch – very similar to crochet chain DS but made with the sewing needle (3), from left: Chain stitch, Braided chain stitch, Heavy chain stitch
- Certain twisted stitch examples made on the knitting loom (4)
- One-over-two bind-off (Gathered bind-off) – similar to DS Chain bind-off
- The techniques called “Thank you, Mom” by Cat Bordhi, and “Shadow stitch” by Alice Yu both use a stitch from a previous row to cover the gap in short row knitting.
But I found nothing that is made exactly like the knitted Distitch that I invented in June 2012. Paragraph
The next task was to give a name to this new technique. After long consideration of many possible names, I finally chose the word Distitch. This is related to the word “distich”, meaning a unit of verse consisting of two lines. Adding another letter T gave DISTITCH. So finally a new knitting term was born. Thanks to my lovely husband for this brilliant idea!
My greatest wish was to share my discovery with the world! I started by writing an article, I made a few drawings and I knitted a few samples. Very soon it became clear that the volume of material is too big for one article. So I decided to write this book about the Distitch technique.
Assia Brill 