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Tasha Could Make That

Tasha Could Make That

Vintage knitting, sewing, and a lifetime of craftiness

Victory beret: intro tips for stranded knitting

November 27, 2013 by Tasha 21 Comments

Alright everyone! This post is especially for those of you knitting my Victory beret as one of your first fair isle projects, for Knit for Victory.

I’ve talked about stranded knitting / fair isle in the past, and have two older posts that extensively cover a few of the topics I’m going to touch on today. For easy reference those are:

  • Getting started with stranded / fair isle knitting
  • Puckers, tension and even stranded knitting

I don’t want to reinvent the wheel here exactly, so today’s post is all about techniques involved when getting your feet wet with stranded knitting (although I would still recommend you read through those two posts at some point, too). I’ll touch on these topics a bit in future posts, but I wanted you to have a helpful resource post you can turn back to when you sit down and start swatching for Victory, or start the beret itself. So this is The Big Post you’ve been waiting for. I don’t claim to be an expert, just a practiced stranded knitting fanatic, and I hope this will help get you started.

I’m going to cover a few things today:

  • Options for how to carry your yarn
  • Consistency in how you carry your two colors across a row
  • Tips for maintaining good tension

It’s a long one, so settle in. Let’s get started!

Options for carrying your yarn

I discussed it in depth in this post on getting started with fair isle, but I’ll say it again: there’s no wrong way to work stranded knitting, so long as it works for you.

Roughly, your options are:

  • Option #1 – carry both strands of yarn in the same hand (either across the same finger, or on different fingers, or using a little device on your finger)
  • Option #2 – carry one strand in each hand (this requires you to know how to knit in both English and Continental styles, i.e. throwing and picking)
  • Option #3 – carry one strand of yarn and drop and pickup the next color as needed

Option #1 carries both colors in the same hand, whichever hand you normally carry your yarn in. You can either carry both strands across one finger, or one strand on each of two different fingers. That adds another level of complexity that means my brain can’t wrap around working in this method, but many people do it this way! One thing you have to be careful about is being consistent with how you carry the yarn (which I’ll touch on more later), always carrying the same strand on top and the same on the bottom so you don’t get tangled skeins.

Carrying both strands in your right hand (‘throwing’):

carrying both colors in your right hand

Carrying both colors in your left hand (‘picking’):

carrying both colors in your left hand

Or, you can use a little doohickey called a knitting thimble or a ‘strickfingerhut’. I’ve never used one, but you can read Kate Davies’ thoughts on using them. If you can’t seem to get your brain to translate stranded knitting to your hands, it might be worth trying out one of these devices. (You can buy a knitting thimble from Amazon and JoAnn’s.)

Option #2 is what I do. I carry one strand of yarn in each hand. Because of this, one ball of yarn sits on my left side and one on the right, and I never have to worry about getting them tangled. As I mentioned I normally knit English style, ‘throwing’ my yarn with my right hand. I can knit Continental, but I can’t purl that way, and I don’t prefer to knit that way on its own, so I save it only for two-color knitting only. Working this way and shown below, I’d knit all the yellow stitches with my right hand, and all the red stitches with my left hand.

carrying one strand per hand

And yes, I tension the yarn completely differently between my hands, and that’s okay. I tension my left strand the way I learned to carry yarn for crochet (before I ever knit), and it’s not at all the same way as I do it in my right hand. But I get even knitting tension doing it this way, and that’s all that matters.

tensioning yarn differently in each hand

When I very first started stranded knitting, I used Option #3. I couldn’t get my fingers to do Option #1 (although I did use this method for a little while, quite clumsily). And I didn’t know how to knit Continental, so I did what made the most sense to me. I’d knit along in one color until I got to when I needed the next color, dropped the first color and picked up the second, and merrily continued along like that.

dropping

You’ll rarely see anyone cite Option #3 as a valid way to work stranded knitting. It’s a slow way to work, especially if you have to change colors frequently. You also have to be consistent with picking up each color in the same manner (one always over, one always under) or you’ll get tangled skeins, but that’s the same with Option #1, too.

So in my opinion, if it works for you and produces results you are happy with, who’s to judge? When you’re just starting off, try a bunch of ways to see what feels best for you. You may do it one way for a number of weeks / months / years and then change your technique!

Be consistent with how you carry your two colors

One of the keys to stranded knitting is a pretty simple concept: be consistent with how you knit from the two (or sometimes more) balls of yarn you’re using in a row.

This is for two main reasons: keeping your working yarns tangle-free and color dominance.

When you knit with two colors in a row, one color is always above the other one. Doesn’t matter how you knit, this is always the case.

one strand is always above the other strand

So what you want to do is make sure that one color is always above and the other color is always below. And do it the same way every time.

Typically, the background color is carried above, with the main color carried below. (In two-hand stranded knitting, that has the main color in the left hand, background color in the right hand, like I showed above.) This relates to something called color dominance (or yarn dominance). One color is usually very slightly dominant over the other color, making those stitches every so slightly larger, and thus more prominent in a design.  There’s a fantastic visual example here to show the difference this can make if you change this up.

For most people, it’s the yarn that’s carried under that proves to be a little more dominant, and thus you’d want it to be the main color. Now, this isn’t always the case for everyone. Consummate designer Donna Druchunas was just having an interesting discussion on this topic earlier today on Twitter, and some people chimed in how the color they carried under wasn’t necessarily the dominant one (for various reasons, including having a looser tension on the upper yarn).

When you’re just starting off, I’d say don’t worry about it too much. Your bet bet is probably to carry the main color under and the background color over, since that usually makes the main color more dominant as I said. But most importantly, be consistent, whichever way you pick.

Let me repeat that again: always do the same thing. You want the background color in the same place, every row, the entire project. And you want the main color in the same place, every row, the entire project.

consistency

For me, that’s always carrying the main color in my left hand, and the background color in my right hand. Every project, every row, every time.

My tips for good tension

Prior to writing up my post on tension, puckers and even stranded knitting a couple of years ago, I spent a long time trying to figure out what exactly was my key to maintaining good tension. And of course, there’s lots of things involved. Practice makes perfect, as they say. But that doesn’t mean if you’re starting out that you have to suffer through a bunch of crappy looking fair isle until you get the hang of it!

Here’s my best advice to help you right from the get-go: make sure that you’re not pulling the next color tight when you change colors. And at first, this might seem counter-intuitive. You’re changing colors, and you may worry that you’re liable to make things loose and floppy. But you won’t! The worst thing you can do is pull the yarn too tight when you change colors.

In stranded knitting, the color not in use (no matter how you choose to carry your yarn) gets ‘stranded’ across the back of the work until you knit the next stitch that calls for that color. That strand of yarn at the back of the work between color changes is called a float.

floats at the back of your knitting in stranded / fair isle knitting

Floats can make or break your stranded knitting. See how they look nice and loose? They aren’t clinging too tightly to my knitting, they’re just kind of hanging out there.

If you pull the next strand of yarn too tight when you change colors, you’ll get puckered knitting that even an aggressive blocking can’t fix. Period. So don’t do that.

examples of pulling yarn too tight and just right when changing colors

How do you keep it nice and loose when you change colors, then? Here’s what I do.

Below, I’m about to change colors. I just knit three stitches in red, and the next stitch needs to be yellow:

color change in stranded knitting

Before I work the next stitch in the new color (yellow), if the stitches just worked on my right-hand needle are at all scrunched up, I spread them out slightly. It’s a small movement, a tiny flick of my right fingers. And it makes all the difference.

If the stitches on the right-hand needle closest to the color change don’t have breathing room, give them a little breathing room when you change colors. See how my stitches are nice and spread out? That’s exactly what you want when you change colors. Breathing room.

making the float nice and loose when you change colors

It may seem like something that’s hard to keep track of, but pretty soon you’ll get into a rhythm and you won’t even think about details like this. When you start off with stranded knitting, if you find you work looser than you’d like, you can always go down a needle size. But if you pull those color changes too tight and end up with a severely puckered piece of knitting, you won’t be able to fix it.

So give those stitches nearest your next color change breathing room, and you’ll be rewarded for it in the long run!

Next up–swatching

Of course I’ll continue to offer tips and cover other related topics along the way as we knit our fair isle berets as part of Knit for Victory, but if you’ve ever been scared of stranded knitting, I hope this helps bring it down to earth for you a bit!

In my next post, I’ll cover some ideas for swatching for Victory in the fair isle pattern in the round, to make sure you get gauge before you start.

Catch up with the Victory beret:

  • Getting started (yarn and color choices)
  • Purchase the pattern

For those of you in the U.S., have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday!! We’ll cover more, soon.

 

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Filed Under: Knit-alongs, Knitting, Knitting Tutorials, Tutorials Tagged With: knit for victory, stranded knitting

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Anna Lindkvist says

    November 28, 2013 at 3:19 am

    Thank you for this post! I have zero experience with stranded knitting so this is very helpful. It will also be a good opportunity to get some knitting done on circular needles, something I usually avoid. 🙂

    What length do you recommend for the circular needles? I’m very excited to get started with my swatching (never thought I’d say that…)!

    Reply
    • Tasha says

      November 28, 2013 at 10:58 am

      This will be up to you– generally, a 16″ circular works best for a hat since the next size up is usually 24″ and is a bit too big for most hats. However, in the crown you’ll have to switch to DPNs or something else, as you’ll decrease away a lot of stitches and then they won’t fit on 1 circular.

      Or, you can put half the stitches on one circular and half on another and work that way (I often do this for working small diameters in the round), or try out Magic Loop. I don’t use Magic Loop often, but I’m coming around to that method more. 🙂

      Reply
  2. Rebecca says

    November 29, 2013 at 12:20 pm

    I want to thank you for this awesome pattern and tutorial. I’m new to knitting and love it, I only wish to be as good as you someday! 😉

    Reply
    • Tasha says

      December 2, 2013 at 9:48 am

      Thanks Rebecca, I hope it helps!

      Reply
  3. Lili says

    November 29, 2013 at 2:16 pm

    I have a very basic question. Do you recommend using circular needles with magic loop or straights? And if straights, will the work fit comfortably on 7″ needles or will I need a 10″ set? Thanks!

    Reply
    • Tasha says

      December 2, 2013 at 9:47 am

      Hmm, I’m not sure if I understand your question exactly, since the magic loop method uses one long circular needle, not straight needles.

      You also can’t work something in the round on straight needles, however it sounds like you might be referring to double-pointed needles instead (which are pointed on both ends, unlike straight needles which have a stopper of some kind on one end)? In which case yes, you could work a hat on DPNs, although I’ve never done so personally. I don’t think 7″ would work however, as it would be too many stitches, even spread across 4 needles. 10″ might work (but even still that would be over 50 stitches per needle)… but I can’t say for certain since I reserve DPNs for small-diameter knitting like socks. 🙂

      Reply
  4. Gail says

    December 2, 2013 at 8:42 am

    What a beautiful and thorough post, Tasha! Your knitting is so beautiful, I always love to see how you do things and read what you have to say about it.

    Reply
    • Tasha says

      December 2, 2013 at 9:48 am

      Thanks Gail, how nice of you to say that! 🙂

      Reply
  5. Miss Crayola Creepy says

    December 4, 2013 at 3:13 pm

    I haven’t ever done any color work and don’t know a thing about it, but this was a great introduction!!! Thank you for taking the time to write something so helpful! xo

    Reply
  6. Vanessa says

    December 8, 2013 at 3:27 pm

    Even though I’ve done stranded knitting before it was still nice and great to read about it on your post! Really loved the images and reading about the different ways in which to strand! I used to work continental and used two strands one in each hand but had to learn English method of knitting for work and now can only do the 3rd method! I’m working on it though and hoping to practice and get back to my normal speed with two colours! X

    Reply
  7. Cathy says

    July 12, 2014 at 1:39 am

    I am just beginning to learn stranded knitting, so I am sure you can imagine how helpful your blogs are to me. Thank you so much for your posts. I find your writing style clear and concise with the pictures adding that extra plus that clarifies things so easily. Please keep up the good work. Much appreciated!

    Reply
  8. Heather Dewar says

    July 13, 2014 at 5:39 pm

    I’m just starting to look into learning stranded knitting – there’s a hat I want to make for my dad for father’s day and the pattern is stranded. I am book marking all your stranded knitting posts so I can easily look up anything I need to! I’m a thrower as well, until this year I had thought that was the only way to knit! Going to practice picking the yarn on a non-stranded project so I can get my hands used to it, as the one yarn per hand idea seems easiest for me!

    Reply
  9. lj noble says

    November 11, 2015 at 7:01 am

    Love you site and the way you present photos that really show what you’re talking about.
    Question about my problem with stranded knitting. I’m using two colors on a pair of mittens. Occasionally the contrast color is showing through between main color stitches on the front of the work. I’ve knit many patterned projects and this hasn’t happened before. What have I started doing incorrectly NOW!

    Thanks again for your informative site.

    lj

    Reply
    • Tasha says

      November 11, 2015 at 8:42 am

      Thank you! And I don’t think you’re doing anything wrong now! That can happen for several reasons, like if the gauge you’re knitting with isn’t particularly tight (meaning the fabric is more dense), or there are longer floats that are stranding across the back of the work, or a combination of things. Once the item is blocked the yarn will probably ‘bloom’ a bit and hopefully fill in some of those spaces. However I’ve never found it to be a problem in a final garment, and I bet you won’t either! 🙂

      Reply
  10. lj noble says

    November 11, 2015 at 5:01 pm

    Your answer has filled me with confidence!
    Thank you so much Tasha.

    lj

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Victory beret: swatching and casting on | By Gum, By Golly says:
    December 17, 2013 at 8:17 am

    […] until you’re done with your swatch, casting off at the end like normal. Remember all the tips I’ve given about keeping your tension even, and you’ll be off to a great […]

    Reply
  2. Victory beret: working from the charts | By Gum, By Golly says:
    December 27, 2013 at 11:27 am

    […] Intro tips for stranded knitting […]

    Reply
  3. Heading Down a Forgotten Road | knitsbywhit says:
    January 12, 2015 at 10:00 am

    […] so I hit the internet to refresh myself on strand color work. I found this great tutorial  on By Gum, By Golly by Tasha. She has done a great job really fleshing out this technique. Tasha highlights two of […]

    Reply
  4. Ginger Made: Hestapeysa (Sweater with Horses) « Ginger Makes… says:
    February 11, 2015 at 1:32 pm

    […] I was still confused about how to hold yarn when you have more than one color, but I found this totally helpful post from Tasha at By Gum By Golly and it gave me the confidence to dive in. I decided to hold one color […]

    Reply
  5. Robot Dog Sweater - Rake and Make says:
    March 16, 2015 at 10:03 am

    […] since I do enjoy doing color work, I would like to find a better method. After the fact, I found this incredibly useful post on stranded knitting by Tasha of the blog By Gum by Golly. The next time I do color work, I will definitely be […]

    Reply
  6. Knitting Tips and Tricks | OlenaHuffmireDesigns says:
    March 31, 2017 at 12:57 pm

    […] In Fair Isle Knitting, trap your floats. By Gum, By Golly shows it […]

    Reply

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