Can you knit two sides of a neck at once?

Hello Claire and welcome to the new site! Thanks for getting involved.

In answer to your question yes you can and before starting the front wind a ball of yarn in the main colour. This will be called Yarn B although it’s the same yarn as in Feeder 1.

For a ‘V’ Neck
Thread Yarn B into the second feeder as for Fair Isle. Set carriage for Fair Isle and bring all needles left of centre 0 to holding position. Knit one row. Note that the right-hand side knits with yarn in Feeder 1 and left side knits in Yarn B. Bring all needles left of centre 0 to holding position. Lay yarn B on top of the left-hand side needles and knit back. The same thing happens so continue like this always bringing the left side needles to holding position on every row. Decrease for the ‘V’ as usual although you do the shaping at both sides on the same row. Please note that you can’t use holding position or upper working position for needles at any time on the right-hand side.

For a Round Neck
Cast off the centre stitches with a separate piece of yarn or take them back to non-working position with a nylon cord. Continue exactly as for the ‘V’ neck working both sides at the same time. This method of course is only for stocking stitch and not for patterned knitting.

For a Lace Neckline
This method works beautifully with the Brother lace carriage but not for Silver Reed and Knitmaster one-action lace carriages which have a quite different action. At the neckline and using a separate length of yarn cast off the neck stitches. With the lace carriage knit the number of lace rows as usual. Knit the two rows with the main carriage as in the method above. There are a couple of things to mention and look out for and the first is to make sure that Yarn B which trails across from left to right does not foul up the lace carriage. If necessary just hold down the strand of yarn while you knit the lace pattern. It’s also important to make sure you weight both sides evenly and put back at least two end needles on the neck side to working position so they don’t knit the lace pattern.

Knitting both sides at once can of course also be done on Passap and Pfaff machines. Wind off some main colour and put it into Feeder 2. Cast off the centre stitches with a piece of separate yarn at the neck edge. Bring pushers to working position beneath the needles at the left of work and pushers to non-working position at right of work. Set locks to BX (left arrow key) / GX and you must now start with Colour 2. This is important to prevent Colour 1 catching in the end right-hand needle. With Colour 2 knit two rows. With Colour 1 knit two rows and so on shaping as necessary.

I hope that helps
Anne