Ribbing with colour

This uses rib stitch and two colours.

Producing colour with double knitting is an excellent technique, but I tried to expand it as an experiment. I'm not sure if it worked!

It's based on the idea for three colour double knitting, where one colour shows on one side, the second shows on the other, and the third is hidden between the two. I wondered if it was possible to use two colours, but hide the second colour inside ordinary double knitting using the first.

So do alternate knit and purl, as usual, and bring both wools between the needle each time. However, you use the same colour for all stitches, and do nothing with the other wool except the moving it from front to back. Obviously, at some point, you switch wools, and do the knitting with the other wool, leaving the first wool to do nothing except move to front and back. See below for result:

It does produce the interesting effect that the pattern is the same (but reversed) on both sides, and in the same colour.

Regretably, the hidden colour isn't hidden that well. It isn't hiding between the two layers of a double knit, it's merely being pushed back by the ribbing. it works better if you pull the hidden wool tight. As you can see, I failed to do that all the time!

Below is the last example on the double knitting page. It is really a combination of double knitting (for the blue part) and ribbing (for the yellow part). Since the blue wool stays inside the blue shape, and doesn't venture into the yellow knitting, you don't get the effect of it showing through, which is better.

I think the conclusion is that you can sometimes mix ribbing and double knitting. But I don't think that ribbing by itself is so successful!