jaykay11

[jaykay11]

Catching floats in stranded colorwork

In general I try not to go more than 4 or 5 stitches before catching a float. If there is a stretch of 5 to 7 or 8 stitches, I'll try to catch the float in the middle somewhere. 9 or more stitches, I'll try to evenly distribute multiple floats. Example, I have a run of 10 stitches of a color, I'll catch the float at the 3rd and 7th stitch. It's a matter of preference, and it might depend on the project itself.

This is a simple twist to catch floats while holding one color at a time in stranded colorwork - one of many different methods to carry floats. There's two ways to twist - the unused yarn goes up and over the working yarn, or the unused yarn goes over and under. It can be thought of as clockwise or counterclockwise. Both ways look a little different depending on if the unused yarn is being kept to the left or right.

Jumping in with an example - after few stitches with the white yarn, now I'm ready to catch a float of the red yarn:

I want to have the red yarn go over the top of the white yarn first, in order to then make it go down below the white yarn:

Now I'm ready to continue on working the white yarn:

I could have just as easily brought the red yarn from below, and twisted it over the top of the white yarn too. Knitter's choice!

The yarns stay twisted/crossed way down by the balls (see the near the top of the picture above - it's blurred, and same as the picture below), but I keep knitting as usual until I need to catch a float again:

Still bringing that red/left/CC yarn under when I switch to it (that's how I hold and carry stranded colorwork)

Next I've knitted some stitches with the red yarn and want to catch a float of the white yarn, and it's already twisted from the last time. All I need to do is move that twist up to the work. I think of this as untwisting, but technically, it's just pre-twisted from the previous float):

Knitting the next stitch...

Now the yarns aren't twisted!

Below is an example of catching multiple floats in one long run of single color stitches. I have a whole bunch of red stitches to knit, so I'll need to catch floats of the white yarn more than once (this isn't really different from above, just another example):

A few stitches are done in the red yarn and I'm getting ready to twist the yarns...

I want that white yarn to go over the top of the red yarn (Why? Because that's what I decided!), so I'll have to come up from below...

Now I'm ready to continue knitting the red yarn

There's that nice twist (blurred top part of the picture above) ready to get un-twisted next time I need to catch a float.

In the picture below, I decided not to catch the float here, because I can see I caught a float in the same row just below this...

So I'll just knit one more stitch

Above I've knitted that next stitch, and my yarns are already crossed (yay!) from the last time I twisted, so I just need to scoot that twist/crossing up to the work...

Second float is caught!

I could always twist the same way each time, but I like to make my MC go up and CC go down (so I showed both ways here). I just want to be sure to "untwist", otherwise the yarns will continually twist around each other.

Hopefully the picture below shows those last two floats a little better

For clarity, I'm using the terms 'twisting', 'crossing', and 'catching floats' somewhat interchangeably

[jaykay11]

Holding and carrying colorwork

This project is using magic loop (but basically the same as in the round), and showing here holding one color at a time, continental style. I keep the main color (MC), the color used throughout the project (white here) to the right, and it will generally go on the top/over when switching to it. The contrast color (CC) is red here, which keeps to the left side and will go to the bottom/under when switching to it. I try to keep them positioned this way while I'm working. I rolled the balls in and tidied up for the picture:

In the next picture, I'm switching to the MC (white yarn), and going over the red yarn, which I just used to knit some stitches as seen on the right needle:

In the picture below, I'm picking up the CC (red yarn), and keeping it under the MC/white yarn (I've pulled the white yarn to the side in order to see better):

That's over and under! You can just drop the yarn that's not being used, but sometimes I hold it lightly with one of my fingers on my right hand to keep the unused yarn out of the way, maybe just for the 1st stitch or 2, and usually not using my right thumb or index finger, as I use those to help control the stitches on the right needle a bit. When I'm getting ready to knit the first stitch of a color, after 2 or more stitches were just knitted in the other color, I will gently hold/scrunch the stitches down the right needle to give a generous float, so the entire fabric can stretch. Here's a picture showing that:

Above I'm scrunching the right needle stitches a little bit to the right using my right thumb (sometimes I use my index finger, but I'm not really holding things very naturally while trying to get decent pictures here). See how it gives the white yarn a little more length traveling over the stitches on the right needle? Below is a picture of doing the same thing but with white stitches on the right needle:

In that last picture you can also see how the white yarn stayed on the top, because I picked up and brought the red yarn under the white. More examples below:

Below is the red yarn hanging out underneath the white:

One last thing about changing color is I'll use my right index finger to stabilize the first new color stitch until I get the next stitch completed:

Coming up next I'll attempt to show how to catch floats with pictures