Hey everyone, it's Dianna from Paper Tiger here. You can find me online as diannawalla
on Ravelry and I'm @cakeandvikings on Instagram. And today I'm going to be talking about stranded
colorwork and I'm really excited for that but before I get into that I wanted to say
thank you so much to everybody who's watched my video about Norwegian wool, if you've shared
it, if you've commented on it, if you have joined in the discussion. I've been blown
away by the response and I'm incredibly grateful, so thank you. Along the same lines I wanted
to say thank you to everybody who's already subscribed to the channel. I can't believe
there are over a thousand of you already. So just, yeah, what a welcome to YouTube.
Thank you. And if you're not already subscribed you can hit the subscribe button below. It's
the best way to find out when new videos go live since I don't have any kind of regular
schedule or anything like that. But yeah, I'm just floored, so thank you. So today I'm
going to be talking about stranded colorwork in knitting which is one of my favorite kinds
of knitting to do. I design a lot of stranded colorwork, I knit other people's stranded
colorwork patterns, I just...I adore it. So I asked for your questions a couple weeks
ago on Instagram and you guys actually asked a lot of great questions so I thought I would
approach this video a little bit like a Q&A. So I'm going to have questions and then sort
of follow up with an answer and some of them will be more in-depth and some will be a little
bit, you know, simpler, but hopefully you find some good information in here, and if
you have other questions always feel free to ask them in the comments or send me a message
or anything like that. I am going to put all of the questions I'll be answering in the
description box below with the timestamp so if you don't have time to watch the whole
video today, just check out the video description and if there's a specific question you want
to see if I've answered, it will be listed down there with the timestamp for what point
in the video to head for. You can just click on the timestamp and it should take you there.
So I'm going to get into the questions in just a minute but before I do, I wanted to
just be really clear about what I mean when I say stranded colorwork. And you'll notice
that I use the term "stranded colorwork" as opposed to "fair isle." To me, Fair Isle is
a term that is applied to a specific ethnic technique of knitting coming from the Shetland
Islands. This is applied more loosely in a lot of contexts by a lot of people but just
personally I prefer to maintain that distinction so I'll talk about stranded colorwork. But
what I'm talking about is basically fabrics like this on my sweater, or like on this hat
here where you have a motif in two or more colors, and it's... you're carrying at least
two colors in a single round of knitting. And the name stranded comes from the fact
that you have strands of the other color running along the back of the work. These are also
called floats, and that's what I'm going to be calling them a lot in this video. So that's
just an idea of what I mean when I say stranded colorwork. But let's get into the questions.
What kind of yarn should I use for stranded colorwork? I might get into trouble with some
people for saying this, but truthfully, you can use any kind of yarn for stranded colorwork.
Now: there are some that might work better than others, there are some that do work better
than others, but every knitter is different and your mileage may vary depending on what
those yarns are. So I personally have used all different kinds of yarns for stranded
colorwork and I've designed with different kinds of yarns for stranded colorwork. I've
used superwash merinos, I've used very wooly wools, like this, it fully runs the gamut.
So I've done colorwork designs that use like Madelinetosh, and other... I've done single
ply fingering in colorwork, which isn't the greatest yarn for it but you can do it. And
then I've also done a lot of like this is Brooklyn Tweed Shelter, so it's a woolen spun
100% non-superwash wool. So the reason we tend to recommend non-superwash wools for
colorwork is that the fibers of the yarn are grabbier so your stitches are going to stay
in place better, so it's easier to maintain the tension of your floats along the backside
of your colorwork especially if you're a newer colorwork knitter. You might just find that
non-superwash wooly wools make it easier for you to maintain your tension, they block out
really well. So there are a lot of advantages to that. If you find that you've tried colorwork
with superwash wools or like alpaca or things like that, and you've struggled with it then
I would recommend trying a woolier wool. If you don't like the "itch factor" of wool,
try a lambswool, because those tend to be softer but they're still going to be a little
bit grabbier. There are certain yarns that I would not recommend for colorwork. Alpaca
is very smooth and very drapey, and you can use it for colorwork but it's not going to
maintain its shape the same way that wool will. Even superwash wool does better than
alpaca. So anything that's like that, the camelid family: alpaca, camel, llama, what
have you. It's just not going to do as well for colorwork, so even if you're using superwash
wools, I'd say stick with a wool over non-wools. You can do colorwork with cotton, there's
no reason why you couldn't, but you're going to have very separate stitches as opposed
to your stitches merging into sort of more of a cohesive fabric if that makes any kind
of sense. So I'm going to show you an example that demonstrates the difference between doing
colorwork with a worsted spun yarn, where the fibers have been combed after they were
carded so that all of the fibers are going in the same direction and laying parallel
and it's very smooth yarn, compared with a woolen spun yarn where they're not combed,
and the fibers are kind of going in every direction so it's a grabbier kind of wool,
it's a woolier wool. And both of these examples are non-superwash, 100% wool, but with a worsted
spun yarn you often tend to have the stitch definition, stitches stay a little bit more
separate, whereas with the woolen spun yarn they're blending more into a cohesive fabric.
So I'm going to show you an example of a worsted spun yarn, this is Quince & Co. Lark. It's
their worsted weight 100% wool. So you can kind of see this is a yarn with a wonderful
stitch definition. It's great for cables for that reason. I do love Quince's yarns for
colorwork, but you're going to have, you know, separate stitches still instead of a sort
of a really cohesive colorwork fabric. This is grippy enough for colorwork, like I said
I love doing colorwork with Quince's wools, but let me show you the difference when you
look at a woolen spun yarn. So this is my vest, my Bruntsfield Vest, knit in Rauma Finull,
the fingering weight fine wool yarn. This one's a little harder to handle but hopefully
you can see that you know, this fabric is much more of a cohesive, single unit than
the hat knit in the Quince & Co. Lark. You can see the stitches, but it's just that the
wool fibers have sort of filled out the gaps between the stitches and it's just - I'll
show you the inside as well. It's just a more cohesive fabric. So, to sum up, truthfully
you can use anything to knit stranded colorwork with. You may have an easier time with woolen
spun yarns or grabby wools than you will with smoother yarns. The last thing I'm going to
say about that is something you'll probably hear me say over and over in this video, which
is that trying out different things and just practicing, and just you know, starting to
learn the difference between these yarns and how they behave and all of that kind of thing,
like, there's no replacement for that. That's going to teach you so much about how different
yarns work in colorwork, it's just trying out different combinations whether you're
using them in different projects or whether you're knitting swatches, nothing can replace
that experience. So I really encourage you to play around. You're not going to love every
result that you try out. Like you're not always going to love what you get, but you're going
to learn something every time. So I can't emphasize enough how useful it is to try out
different yarns and different color combinations and different techniques and whatever it is.
There's no replacement for practice. Practice is everything. How should I hold the yarns
when knitting with two or more colors? So there's no single way that's like the "correct"
way to hold your yarns with doing colorwork. As with everything in knitting, there's multiple
ways to do something that achieves the same result. So I can show you how I hold my yarns,
and that is I'm a continental knitter to begin with, so I carry both yarns over my left index
finger, and I just knit from, you know, whichever color I need. But there's a lot of people
that use the two-handed method, and the-two handed method involves using one of the yarns
in your left hand continental-style and you're throwing with the other in your right hand,
English-style, and it's also possible to carry both yarns in your right hand, if you're a
thrower. And then last but not least, this is actually something I did for years, one
yarn at a time, where you just pick up the color you need and you drop it when you're
done with it and you pick up the other color when you need it and you drop it when you're
done with it. That's a lot slower, but it's perfectly valid. It's not wrong. Like I said
I did colorwork this way for years and I was really happy with my results. When I started
carrying both yarns at the same time my colorwork sped up of course, but there's nothing wrong
with one yarn at a time if that's where you're at and if that's what feels good to you. Related
to the last question: how do I keep my yarns from turning into a tangled mess? This is
one of those things that's deceptively simple and like many deceptively simple things it
can be hard to wrap your head around or to execute it if you haven't - just if it hasn't
clicked for you yet. But the simplest way to keep your yarns from getting tangled around
each other when you're doing colorwork is to maintain their positions. So you're always
going to have one yarn coming from one side and one yarn coming from the other side, and
they're never crossing over each other when you're changing colors if that makes any sense.
So if you're doing the one yarn at a time method where you're picking up the one you
need and putting it down and all of that - in my experience this is where knitters have
this problem with the yarns getting tangled the most - and if you are knitting that way
just make sure to keep your yarns separate. Like if you're sitting on the couch put one
ball of yarn on one side and one ball of yarn on the other side, or if you're at a desk
or a table, put them on two sides, with space between them and make sure that you're always
grabbing your yarn from the same place. So one of them's coming from below, and one of
them's coming from above, and you never want to swap that, if that makes any sense. The
bottom line is if you're maintaining the position of the yarns, they shouldn't twist. You won't
have this tangled mess happening. The one place that I know of that I've done in colorwork
where you have the yarns constantly twisting around each other is when you're working a
Latvian braid. And it can be a little frustrating. But otherwise, if you're just doing normal
colorwork, they shouldn't twist. So thinking about yarn positions brings me to color dominance.
What is "color dominance" or "yarn dominance" in stranded colorwork? So color dominance
is a subtle effect caused by the structure of colorwork fabric. If your tension is uneven
that can have an effect on color dominance in your knitting, but color dominance is a
separate phenomenon. This is something that's predictable by the position of the yarns.
So it's not just a matter of uneven tension. This is just something that's a fact of colorwork
fabric. So stranded colorwork of course has these floats across the back of your work
across the wrong side. And if you take a closer look at them, you'll start to notice that
there's one color where the strands sit above, and there's one color where the strand sits
slightly below in the same row, in the same round of knitting. So those two strands don't
sit in a single line, even when they are part of the same round. When you're knitting you
have the stitches on the right side, and the float of the other color on the back so there's
an outside and an inside. But when you change from one color to the other, those yarns swap
positions and the strands naturally end up stacked one on top of each other, because
they can't occupy the same place. So that means that the yarn whose strand sits below,
so on this hat that's the green strand, the green strand is sitting below the blue strand,
the yarn whose strand sits below becomes the dominant color. Because it has every so slightly
elongated stitches. Even when your tension is perfectly even, just because of the way
that the yarns have to swap positions. One's coming from the front, one's, you know, coming
from the back. One sits on top of the other, so the one that sits below will have ever
so slightly elongated stitches. Width-wise they're the same size, your tension's even,
but it's just the structure of the fabric. So like I said your tension can affect your
dominance but even when you're tension's even this is something that's going to show up.
So the other thing about it is that different types of motifs will show color dominance
more prominently or less prominently. And I have a couple of swatches to show you what
this looks like in practice. So this is a swatch that I knit in Quince & Co. Lark. I
did swatch it in the round but the quick way where the strands are cut across the back,
but so I was knitting across the right side every row. This is a motif from the Norwegian
Knitting Patterns, Norske Strikkemønstre book, by Annichen Sibbern Bøhn. And the effect
is pretty subtle here. So what I've done, I missed a row, but what I've done is I swatched
the motif twice. On the bottom, I held the white yarn in the dominant position, and on
the top I held the purple yarn in teh dominant position. So like I said this is a subtle
effect. My tension is pretty even overall, my stitches are the same size, you know, all
of that sort of stuff, but if you look closely, you can see that the motif is ever so slightly
more prominent when the motif color, the white, was held dominant, and it's a little bit less
prominent here. I'm going to show you what this looks like with a very repetitive geometric
motif next. So this swatch is also Quince & Co. This is their fingering weight, Quince
& Co. Finch. And here, I have continued, you know, the same motif, the same chart throughout
the whole thing, but in the bottom half, the blue is held dominant, and in the top half
the white is held dominant. Like I said, this is a subtle effect, it's not hugely obvious.
And you might not notice when you're knitting colorwork that this is something that happens.
I knit colorwork for years without knowing about color dominance and I was perfectly
happy with the results I was getting. I go back and I can see that my dominance wasn't
always consistent, but it's subtle. It doesn't matter that much. But anyway that's just to
show you, and if I show you the back of the fabric, the position of the strands has swapped.
So, when the blue is the dominant color you can see more of the white down on the bottom
on the wrong side, and when the white is the dominant color you can see more of the blue
on the top. Like I said, this is the same chart through the whole thing, I just changed
the dominant color. But the place where color dominance is the most obvious is in vertically
oriented motifs. So vertical stripes in stranding is the most obvious place where you'll see
this. It's still you know kind of a subtle thing, but let me just show you the swatch.
So this is vertical stripes. I maintained the position of the stripes the whole way
through, but I changed the dominant color halfway through. Once again, you know, my
tension is even. I'll show you the wrong side you can see the same thing. It's more obvious
on the wrong side in fact, you can see that line really well. But you do see how it's
the most obvious with a vertical motif. You can see a line straight through the knitting
where I changed the dominant color. If you are a beginner at colorwork, color dominance
is not the most important thing for you to worry about. But knowing about color dominance
is one of those things that can help you improve your colorwork knitting if you are frustrated
with how it looks, if you feel like your motifs aren't clear enough, if you find that your
yarns are getting twisted, if you pay attention to color dominance and maintain the position
of the yarns then you're going to be happier with your knitting. So the thing to know about
color dominance is if you knit typically, that is to say from right to left, the dominant
color, the color that strands below, is always going to be the leftmost color. So I hold
both yarns in my left hand, and that means that I have the dominant color to the left
of the right on my index finger. If you are a two-handed colorwork knitter you're going
to carry the dominant yarn in your left hand and the non-dominant yarn or the background
color in your right hand. And if you carry both in your right hand, the one that sits
to the left is going to be the dominant color still. It's as simple as that. Do you have
any tips to maintain even tension? My number one tip is always give your stitches some
breathing space. When you're knitting stranded colorwork, take the time to pause every so
often, and stretch out the stitches you just knit along your right-hand needle. You want
there to be equal space between the stitches, equal space between stitches of the same color
but equal space between the stitches when you're changing colors as well. This helps
you keep your floats long enough which is usually the problem that we have when we have
trouble with our colorwork tension. Usually our floats are too short, the knitting's too
tight. If you stretch out your stitches that will help you maintain that tension. The other
thing is people run into floats getting too short around the corners of their work when
they're knitting on double-pointed needles or doing magic loop. And my trick, I don't
do magic loop so I can't speak for that, but on double-pointed needles I hold the needles
parallel just like this whenever I'm switching from one needle to the next and I'm carrying
a float across that join where the needles meet. I have a blog post on how to deal with
tight colorwork so if that's your tension issue, I will link that below. There's some
more specific tips. How do you catch your floats? How do I catch a float when it's the
non-dominant color? So I get asked about floats along the backside of the work a lot, because
sometimes you have a motif where you have a long float. The float's traveling across
a large number of stitches. Maybe it's 8 stitches, maybe it's 12 stitches, maybe it's 20 stitches
if it's a really unusual motif. And if it's the kind of piece, if it's mittens, if it's
a sleeve, if it's anything that hands or fingers or jewelry or small things might be coming
into contact with, those floats are at risk of you know, getting snagged. So I have an
example here. This was just from the intro. You can see on the wrong side of this piece
I have a lot of really long floats. And this one is just meant to be decorative, you know,
so I didn't need to worry about that but you can see how with long floats it's really easy
for any of these long floats to snag. So with a decorative piece it's not as important but
if you're knitting like I said mittens, or a sweater, a sweater sleeve, anything where
hands are going to be going into it, you might have jewelry on, you might snag it on something,
you want to think about those long floats and how to prevent them from snagging. So
we can trap floats. So I grabbed one of my favorite mittens as an example of something
with sort of more irregular motifs where you have long stretches of either one color or
the other. And you might want to trap the floats along the back of the work. The more
common thing that happens is you'll have long stretches of the main color, which is the
light grey in this case, but sometimes, like with these mittens you have long stretches
of your contrasting color as well which is the black here. So in both cases you would
want to trap the floats so that when you put your hand in the mitten you're not snagging
on them every time you put them on. So now I've turned the mitten inside out and you
can see that on the palm side of the mitten, the floats are all relatively short, it's
very easy to work the motif without needing to trap any floats because they're all relatively
short to begin with. I don't think any of these are longer than three stitches. So that's
really good. But on the back of the hand there's the motif with the two ravens. So of course
you see it in the opposite colors on the wrong side here. So you sort of see my ravens in
white. And if you look closely - I wear these all the time so they're a little, they're
starting to felt, but hopefully you can see - there's a few black dots in here on the
body of the raven where I trapped the float because otherwise that would've been a very
long float indeed. So that's just to give you an example of what we're talking about.
You have a long stretch of one color which means you have a long float in the other color
and you want to trap it so that you don't end up with a float that's 20 stitches long.
So there's a few different ways to trap floats, and the one that I use the most involves just
trapping the float as you're going along knitting. So the way that I carry the yarns when I'm
knitting stranded colorwork with both yarns over my left hand. I'm just showing you this
is how I usually do it. If I have a long stretch of the main color and I need to trap the float
of the contrasting color, I'm putting the needle underneath the contrasting color yarn
to grab that main color yarn instead of the normal way. If you have a long stretch of
the contrasting color, or I should say the dominant color, the one to the left, and you
need to trap a float of the main color or the background color, that looks a little
bit different. It's a little bit harder to work, sometimes it requires a little bit more
attention, but it is possible. The other thing you can do if you're knitting along and you
need to trap a float or catch a float. I used to use this a lot more. It works best for
small things like hats or mittens. If you're doing the yoke of a sweater, this one's a
little harder. But I've got my two yarns, right, and I've got my knitted piece. So I've
done a number of stitches in the pink yarn here, so imagine that I'm going to continue
knitting with the pink, and I want to trap this float. The simple thing to do is to just
twist the work 180º. You can see the yarns are twisted around each other, so when I go
to knit the next stitch, I've trapped this float on the back side of the work. So like
I said that works best with small things, so that you can pick up the piece, twist it
360º, I think I said 180 the first time. You twist it all the way around, and then
you can keep knitting. And you have trapped the float on the back of the work. Now one
of the other things I get asked about catching floats is how often you should do it. So how
many stitches should you go before you catch a float. What's the longest stretch of stitches
that you can leave. And my answer to this is always that it's really personal preference.
It's up to you. So personally I don't like trapping floats very much and I will avoid
it if I feel like I can get away with avoiding it. The main reason that I don't like it is
that I think it basically always disrupts the tension of the fabric. I think it's always
at least a little bit visible from the right side. Even if you can't see the color coming
through, so there's you know on these mittens where I have trapped the white float behind
the black body of the raven, you can't really see any peeks of white coming through, but
it does effect, you know I can see little points where the mitten puckers when I'm looking
at it and I can see "oh that's where I caught the float, that's where it happened." So I
feel like it disrupts the tension of the fabric. I like a very flat and tidy colorwork fabric,
and that's the main reason that I will avoid it if I can. Some people say don't go more
than 5 stitches or 7 stitches, which is a little bit weird to me because 5 stitches
in a fingering weight yarn is a smaller amount of - it's a shorter float than 5 stitches
in a worsted weight or a bulky weight yarn. So it's not, it seems kind of arbitrary to
me, but if that's what works for you, then that's great. Some people don't want to go
more than an inch or more than 2 cm without catching a float. It's totally up to you.
You also get in the Coast Salish knitting tradition the Cowichan sweaters. The way that
those tend to be worked, usually the colors are caught like every other float or something
like that, and that's just part of that tradition it's part of how that knitting has always
been done. And it's just a matter of what you like and what works for you. Do you have
any tips for knitting when you have more than 2 colors in a round? So in my experience stranded
colorwork is most often just 2 colors in the same round. This is the Fair Isle tradition
from Shetland, typically you only ever have 2, never more than that. And this is usually
true for traditional Norwegian knitting as well, although some of the more modern patterns
have multiple colors, more than 2 colors per round. But there are a couple of traditions
where it's very very typical to have rounds of colorwork that have 3 colors or more colors.
So a lot of Icelandic yokes have multiple rounds in a pattern where there's 3 colors
being carried along. The really popular Birkin sweater by Caitlin Hunter I believe has rounds
that are 3 colors in the same round. I think Latvian mittens sometimes Latvian knitting
has more than 2 colors per round like this, and maybe what I think of as the most famous
case of multiple colors per round - the Bohus knitting tradition from Sweden. The Bohus
knitting company that was in the mid-20th century in Sweden. Those yokes could have
4 or 5 colors in a single round and they are technically challenging. So the question is
how do you manage all of those yarns? It's hard enough to manage 2, what do you do when
you have 3 in a single round or anything like that? And my top tip for this is to try using
stranding guides. So let me show you these individually. So here's one kind of stranding
guide. And this one is actually not so useful for knitting with more than 2 colors. If you
knit in the 2-handed method, you can wear one like this over one of your hands, and
that will keep your two yarns separate, and then the third yarn would be in the other
hand. But if you're like me, this is not so great except for knitting with just two colors.
I've also seen this kind referred to as a Norwegian thimble, I'm not sure why, but that's
one that's available. When I'm knitting with more than 2 colors, I like to use this kind.
So this kind has a little lid that opens and closes and you can see there are spaces in
between. When I close this I have basically four spaces where it keeps the yarns in order,
in line. So when I've done swatches of Bohus style knitting, I use one of these to keep
my 4 yarns in a single round separate. So again if you struggle with yarn management
with even just 2 colors, you can give one of these a try, and if it's a round of knitting
with more than 2 colors, you're knitting an Icelandic yoke, you're knitting something
like that, these are super super useful tools. Is it possible to adjust your row gauge in
stranded knitting? So I think this is a really good question and it's also a little bit of
a tougher one to answer. The first thing that I would try would be to play around with the
type of needle you're using to knit your stranded colorwork. So there will be a difference between
knitting with this, a circular needle, this one's metal, and this, which is bamboo double-pointed
needles. Or wooden needles, or plastic needles, or ergonomic needles. Any and all of the above.
They're going to have an effect on your gauge in general, so you might notice that you are
- a lot of people are tighter on double-pointed needles than they are on circular needles.
You might see a difference in your gauge depending on whether you're using magic loop or not.
Play around with different types and see if you get a different row gauge. I know for
example in cabling, whether or not you use a cable needle to do your cables can affect
your row gauge. So I think with stranded knitting whether you're using a circular needle or
doing magic loop or double-pointed needles can have an effect on that as well as bamboo
vs. plastic. vs. metal vs. hardwood. Because they all have different levels of resistance,
and they handle differently in your hands. I think that's the best tip I have for now
but related to that I feel like I should mention that your row gauge will differ in stranded
colorwork compared with your plain stockinette. So normally you have a smaller number of rows
per 4" or whatever than you do for plain stockinette. So for example if I'm getting 26 stitches
and 30 rows in 4" for plain stockinette, I might get 26 stitches and 27 rows in colorwork.
So if you're working on a project that has both, like a yoke like this where you have
colorwork, and then there's a lot of plain knitting, swatch both. Plain stockinette,
and the colorwork, because the gauge is going to differ. How do you weave in ends on pieces
with multiple colors? This is one of those questions that comes down to personal preference
again because some people are very meticulous about weaving in their ends and they want
the wrong side to look just as beautiful as the right side, and other people just want
to get the job done. For me, weaving in my ends in colorwork, how I go about it depends
a little bit on which type of yarn I'm using. So with a stickier wool, a wooly wool, a non-superwash,
it's a little bit easier because the wool is going to grab to itself better and I'm
not as worried about it going anywhere. If it's a superwash wool I'm going to be a little
bit more meticulous: I'm going to change directions more often, I'm going to try to do some duplicate
stitch. But just to give you a little example, I'm going to show you the Laurus hat again.
I accidentally showed you this side of it already. There's not that much colorwork here,
right, but you can see here where I've woven my end in, just across the inside of the work.
Nothing super fancy. This is where the yarn ends, and I've literally just pulled the thread,
pulled the tail underneath the floats, and then snipped it. And it's not going anywhere.
Across the bottom I've sort of, this one's striped, but I've, you know, followed the
line of the green on the inside. I do try to stick together, the same color weaving
into the same color in case it ever peeks through. But personally I'm not very meticulous
about weaving in ends. I will mention though if you're doing something that's more of a
Fair Isle Shetland style of knitting, like the Bruntsfield Vest again, you'll notice
unlike the Laurus hat which is just two colors, just a small band of colorwork, you're changing
colors a lot with something like this. So my contrast color is the same for a number
of rows, and it's the same for a number of rows here, but the background color is changing
all the time, every couple of rows. And with this one I did something which I don't normally
take the time to do, but I spit spliced the yarn at the join where I was changing colors.
Because otherwise it's so many ends to weave in. It takes a little bit longer to splice
the yarn together when you're changing to the new color, but it's worth it in the end
because you have so many fewer ends to weave in. Splicing is something that is going to
work best with a non-superwash wool. I wouldn't try and do it with a superwash wool. You want
something that's going to be able to felt a little bit. And last but not least I had
this really excellent question. I see beautiful projects and immediately I think the knitter
is a pro. How many projects doI have to knit before I get the hang of it? Oh my goodness,
I wish I had my first attempts at colorwork to show you, because they were really awful.
They were so bad. The first colorwork project I ever tried to do I wanted to knit the Corazon
mittens from Knitty. Stranded colorwork mittens, they were beautiful, I loved them. I did everything
wrong. I think I was using the wrong yarn weight, I was new to knitting in the round
anyway, and I was new to knitting on double-pointed needles. So I used the wrong yarn weight,
I used two yarns with very low contrast, they were very close in color. So the contrast,
the motif just didn't show up very well. And then my tension was abysmal. It was the most
puckered piece of knitting I have ever produced in my life. And I got to the top of the mitten,
and I had to do Kitchener stitch to close it and I had never done Kitchener stitch before
and I just gave up, I was like, it's not worth learning to do this for this really ugly mitten
that doesn't, it's not the right size, it doesn't look good, it's just miserable. It
took a long time, it took a lot of practice, and like I said earlier in the video, there's
no replacement for practice. Don't be discouraged when you see beautiful photos on Instagram,
or people sharing their projects on podcasts, and all of that, because most of us have produced
some really terrible-looking colorwork before we got to the point of knitting colorwork
sweaters or colorwork mittens or anything like that. The other thing I want to say about
this is that if you're not happy with how your stranded colorwork project is looking,
put it on hold, thread a length of yarn through the stitches, or a long interchangeable cable
or something, just to put the stitches on hold, stop, and block it. Or knit a little
swatch and block it. Because blocking helps stranded colorwork so much. You will see a
difference. Yeah, I just really want to encourage you to give it a shot, don't feel bad if you
don't like what you're getting, because most of us who do stranded colorwork, we've been
there. We know. We're not automatically pros. It's just, at this point in my life I've done
a lot of stranded colorwork, I knit colorwork all the time, and it's really easy for me
now. But ten years ago that wasn't true at all. I think that's all I'm going to have
time for today, although I do have more questions I want to answer so I'll probably do a follow-up
video to this at some point. I also wanted to let you know I have - I mentioned this
a couple of times, but for some of these questions I have blog posts that are relevant to what
I was talking about and help answer those questions and all of those will be linked
below so you can check those out if you want to spend a little bit more time reading about
some of these things. So for now, thank you so much for taking the time to join me today.
I hope that you learned something from this video, and please feel free to share your
own tips or experiences in the comments. There are a lot of talented colorwork knitters out
there, and I'd love to hear from you, and my viewers would love to hear from you too.
And if you have more questions, just go ahead and post them in the comments as well. I'll
either try to answer them there or I might save them for the next Q&A video. And then
I'm hoping to film some tutorials as well so if there's specific techniques beyond what
I've shown in this video that you want to see demonstrated, just let me know down there
as well. As I mentioned at the top of this video, subscribing to the channel is the best
way to stay up-to-date when I have new videos that go up. So feel free to do that if you're
interested in that, and if you did enjoy the video it would be great if you could give
it a thumbs up. But yeah, that's it for now. Thank you so much for watching, and I'll see
you next time. Bye!
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