Fingerless mittens slant stitches

I have been working on fingerless mittens. I just don't like how the stitches look when you stop working in the round and start working the thumb section in the flat. The stitches when working in the round with the e-wrap (and I know the knit stitch is not this way but I like that slight slant from the e-wrap) all slant in one direction, but the stitches when working back and forth in the flat method for the thumb slant in two directions. So it just looks funny at that point to have your stitches face in two different directions.

So I decided I just had to find a way to make the stitches look more uniform. I have tried several different things but nothing worked exactly. Then night before last I tried just doing the knit stitch at that point to see how it would look. Even my hubby can see instantly that there is a difference in the look of the mitten at that point, with everything I have tried.

So yesterday my son had a dentist appointment. He doesn't drive so I took him. I was sitting in the waiting room with my loom and started on a second fingerless mitten. As I was working I was trying to think of other ways to do the back and forth flat section to make it look better. I was even at the point of thinking about just doing cut and tie for each row. I don't like extra ends but I am so use to having them (I crochet and have had many ends to hide) that the idea of them doesn't bother me that much. Still I would rather not have to do it if I don't have to.

So here I am sitting with my headphones and little AM radio listening to Rush, and knitting. The ideas are bouncing around in my head then I see it. So I tried what I saw last night and it worked.

Ok here goes. What is an e-wrap? It is a twisted knit stitch. So what is a knit stitch? It is an un-twisted stitch. So what if I do a knit stitch (see bottom of page for how I do this stitch) using the method taught by someone on the groups. Then when I have that long loop in fingers, I twist it before I place it back on the peg. No matter what direction I am needing to do this I can twist this stitch to make it lay as I want.

Ok I knit around the loom going in a clockwise direction. So when I am knitting in the flat method the slants that bother me are the ones going in the counterclockwise direction. Thinking through the above I know that I only need to worry about that different direction in making the stitches slant the way I want.

So as long as I am wrapping in my normal direction going clockwise, I can just e-wrap, but when I start going in the counterclockwise direction I needed to do the knit stitch and twist it before putting it back on the pegs.

So how do you figure out what direction to twist that knit stitch. Well I did an experiment. I went and took one stitch from the section that I had e-wrapped in my direction of knitting, and un-twisted it watching the direction of the twist. Then I twisted it back and put it back on the peg. Then I started my rows of flat knit twisted stitch.

An addition:

In my telling of how I did this I did not say how I did the actual knit stitch. I do not do the one where you simply pull the bottom wrap over the top of the yarn laid across the peg. I do it like the purl stitch is done.

You place the yarn strand at the top of the peg above the wrap. Lift the wrap and pull the yarn strand "down towards the bottom of the peg" pulling up a long loop. Holding that loop pull the wrap it is going through off the peg.

Now to do the twisted knit with this you simply twist it in the
direction you need to make it lay as your other stitches.

Since I knit normally around the loom in a clockwise direction, my
opposite is the counterclockwise. So when I do this twisted knitted
flat stitch I have to twist my loop towards my right and place it
back on the peg. Then tighten it down and move to the next peg.

You are only doing this twisted flat knitted stitch on one row. The
other row that goes in my normal direction I simply e-wrap. So this
is not a big slow me down process.