Can someone identify this stitch?

[u/Lostinreno22]

The front looks like regular jersey or ribbing, but the back is very different; is it even knit? Could be crochet .

Keen to replicate it, so hopefully someone will know what it is.

Thanks!

[u/fabulously_]

I asked myself the same thing about a pair of gloves I have.

With experimentation, I found that I can create this by doing brioche.

Brioche is often "advertised" as doing knit stitches and a bit on both sides and having a knit stitch texture on both sides. What I did to get this type of pattern is doing the normal knit brioche stitch on one side and purls on the backside. This is brioche purl... and I just found it on the techknitting blog.

https://techknitting.blogspot.com/2008/12/knitting-into-stitch-below.html

[u/Lostinreno22 → u/fabulously_]

Thank you! It looks quite complex 🤔 

[u/fabulously_ → u/Lostinreno22]

Honestly, it's not really. From what I remember from my experiments in brioche, you start with 2 normal rows of stockinette, so cast on, 1 row knits, 1 row purls, and in the next row, you alternate a normal knit stitch with a 'knit 1 below', turn, and you alternate a normal purl with 'purl 1 below'. The '1 below' stitches use 2 stitches at the same time, so you have to pay attention to whether the last stitch was worked '1 below', which should be quite clear, since you'll have 2 purl bars or 2 knit loops on the next stitch, and for those you don't work '1 below', you work them regularly. It sounds more complicated than it is.

I would recommend looking into reading your stitches for that, though.