New Favorites: Colorwork plus

New Favorites: Colorwork plus

A variety of conversations and previews and proximity to experts lately has me itching to get some colorwork into my knittin queue, and I’m particularly smitten with these two patterns with just a little spot of something extra:

TOP: Hoopla by Dianna Walla (from the powerhouse new issue of Pom Pom) is a characteristically appealing 2-color job but with the subtle flair of a Latvian braid at the transition from ribbing to stockinette.

BOTTOM: Inlet Scarf by Inese Sang is mosaic, for starters (which I’m still dying to try), but I also really love the simple black border setting the mosaic section apart from the staggered rib texture along both ends — really lovely combination of elements

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PREVIOUSLY in New Favorites: Whelk

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New Favorites: Colorwork practice

New Favorites: Colorwork practice

Every time I knit a stranded project (meaning, about once a year) I find myself lecturing myself about how I really need to not let so much time pass between efforts. Wouldn’t it be lovely to be more fluid at it? To venture into projects that are more than just a few rows of colorwork in a sea of solids? After more than a year hiatus, I finished the stranded portion of my St. Brendan-in-progress very quickly and I am hereby swearing not to go so long before I do it again! The solution: hats between sweaters.

TOP: Coronal by Erica Smith

MIDDLE LEFT: Banff by Tin Can Knits

MIDDLE RIGHT: Verso by Bristol Ivy

BOTTOM: Northdale Hat by Gudrun Johnston

The only trouble is I want them all to be black and natural …

For colorwork advice and pattern recommendations, see: Colorwork for first-timers

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PREVIOUSLY in New Favorites: Bulky cardigans

New Favorites: Winter blues

New Favorites: Winter blues

The “Winter Blues” issue of Amirisu is out and it’s easily one of my favorite issues, not least because of the dark-yoked sweater in there. In fact, I’m obsessed with the idea of knitting all three of these pieces, each of which employs colorwork in an intriguing way:

TOP: Skaftafell by Beatrice Perron Dahlen is an updated lopapeysa with simplified colorwork at the yoke

BOTTOM LEFT: Tenchi by Olga Buraya-Kefelian is a cowl worked in modified two-color brioche

BOTTOM RIGHT: Jokull by Keiko Kikuno is a large wrap that combines three ideas — ombré, colorwork and houndstooth — and somehow winds up being mesmerizingly spare instead of a big mess

I also really love the art direction and styling here — all so good. Of course, I have a stack of them for you at Fringe Supply Co, but having now seen the issue in person, I think I should have ordered more!

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PREVIOUSLY in New Favorites: Dark-yoked sweaters

Colorwork patterns for first-timers

Colorwork knitting patterns for first-timers

OK! Picking back up with the Beginning to Knit series, let’s talk about colorwork — specifically, stranded or “fair isle” knitting. (I’m not going into intarsia in this post.) Just like cables, stranded knitting is a great thing to try when you’re still fairly new to knitting. But even or especially if you’ve been knitting a long time and have never done it, it’s time! Both seem really difficult and amazing and impressive but are actually insanely simple. In the case of stranded knitting, it’s just stockinette and it’s almost always done in the round, so you’re only ever working from the right side of the fabric. You can handle knitting in the round, right? There are only two tricks to knitting multi- rather than single-color stockinette:

1) Holding the yarn.
If a pattern row has you knit two white stitches, then two black stitches and repeat that to the end of the row, you could literally knit the two white stitches, drop the yarn, pick up the black yarn and knit two stitches, drop it, etc. Nothing wrong with that, but it would slow you down a bit. Depending on how ambidextrous you are and which hand your normally hold your working yarn in, you could hold both yarns in your left hand, both in your right, or one in each hand. (That’s my preference.) There are copious videos on the web demonstrating all the options.

2) Minding your floats.
Imagine what I described above: putting one yarn down and picking up the next one. On the wrong side of the work, that new yarn has to reach across the two (or however many) stitches you just worked in the other color, and that little bit of yarn carried behind the work is called a float. (You’ve seen floats on the back side of fair isle knitting before, no doubt, but here’s a pic for you.) The reason most people’s stranded work winds up being tighter than single-color work is that their floats are too short and it pulls on the back of the work. So for one thing, you have to be careful to keep your floats even — the same width as the stitches they float behind. And for another, when the floats get very long — longer than a inch or so — you need to “trap” them by simply twisting the two yarns in back.

Sample colorwork chart from Pine Bough Cowl by Dianna Potter WallaThe other key difference is that when you’re working stockinette in the round, the last thing in the world you need is a chart — you’re just knitting every stitch! But for colorwork, you pretty much always need a chart showing you which stitches are worked in which colors. As long as you’re knitting in the round, you read the chart exactly like you knit: from right to left, starting at the bottom and working your way up. If a chart seems daunting, keep in mind that you only knit one row at a time. Block out all but the first (bottom) row on this sample chart and you’ll see that all you need to do is knit 1 green, 1 blue, 1 green, 7 blue, then repeat that 10-stitch sequence to the end of the round. You can do that, right? Then take the next row as it comes. I borrowed this sample chart from Dianna Walla’s free Pine Bough Cowl pattern, which was a huge hit with you all in the big cowls roundup a few months ago — it would be a great introduction to both colorwork and charts for the moderately ambitious among you. (Note that in some cases on a colorwork chart you’ll see black dots in some of the squares. Those dots are just there to emphasize the motif that’s being created — chevrons or triangles or whatever it may be. It’s just a visual aid; you still just knit every stitch.) [See UPDATE below about Dianna and charts.]

So, in my mind, the ideal projects for first-timers are those that A) are knitted in the round, B) never use more than two colors within a single row and C) don’t involve any long floats. Some suggestions, pictured above:

TOP ROW: BASIC GEOMETRY
left: Dessau Cowl by Carrie Bostick Hoge — super-simple triangles pattern, maybe slightly long floats (See also: Flying Geese Cowl, Tolt Hat and Mitts)
center: Netty Cowl by Ien Sie — polka dots worked in a tube and grafted into a loop (See also: Herrington and Empire State)
right: Amira pullover by Andrea Rangel — just a little colorwork around the circular yoke (See also: Willard, Stasis, slightly more intricate Skydottir, or the Altair hat)

MIDDLE ROW: ZIGS, ZAGS AND CROSSES
left: Harpa scarf by Cirilia Rose — tube scarf with long ribbed ends
center: Muckle Mitts by Mary Jane Mucklestone — my first colorwork project, includes both 2- and 3- color versions (either way just two colors per round) (See also: the more ambitious Seasons hat)
right: Vega hat by Alexis Winslow

BOTTOM ROW: GETTING INTRICATE
left: Gloaming Mittens by Leila Raabe — there’s a slight chance there may be some 3-color rounds in here but I don’t think so
center: Selbu Modern hat by Kate Gagnon Osborn — like delicate Art Nouveau wallpaper for your head (free pattern)
right: Funchal Moebius by Kate Davies — clever play with lights and darks in a tube that’s grafted into a moebius (or a loop if you like)

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I personally put off trying colorwork for two years, and then decided to take Mary Jane Mucklestone’s beginner class to get me off my duff and so I’d be sure to learn good habits right from the start. If you’re at all nervous about trying stranded knitting, then by all means sign up for a class. As I always say, you never know what else you might learn.

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UPDATE: Dianna Walla left a comment below about her chart. She just did a post on her blog about working from colorwork charts, which you should definitely take a look at. See also her recent post about color dominance.

Look ma, three colors!

My first colorwork

The universe has sent me several signs in the past month that it’s time for me to learn fair isle knitting. (Tell you about them when I can.) What the universe apparently missed is that I had already signed up for a class! Which is where I spent my Sunday morning: learning proper habits and smart tips from the highly revered and totally charming Mary Jane Mucklestone. She not only bowled me over with her deep historical knowledge and her mountain of jaw-dropping colorwork swatches — each of them roughly twelve by twenty-four inches! — but also with her red clogs, literally the best clogs I have ever laid eyes on. I didn’t get very far on this hat-to-be, but I have totally got this.

[MISSED CONNECTION: Your name was Denise and you loaned me a stitch marker. Didn’t mean to swipe it. Will pay you back in spades if you’ll only tell me how to contact you!]

The Knitting Lab market was high quality but tiny compared to similar events I’ve attended, so I managed to escape with only one skein of yarn — a really deliciously hairy, naturally pewter, alpaca and mohair blend from Toots le Blanc, at half price. And Friday evening I got to eat at a hilarious little Japanese place with two of the very loveliest yarn people. Pretty brilliant weekend.

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ICYMI this week is quite recent but highly relevant, here in gift-knitting season: Scarves to start now.

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The yarn is Kenzie, sent to me by Skacel.

FO Sightings: Thea Colman’s no big deal

thea colman's blizzard mitts

What did you do during the blizzard, Northeasterners? Thea Colman (aka BabyCocktails) was “playing around” and cranked out these gorgeous fair isle mitts. But I needn’t be quite so jealous — she says a pattern will follow.

(Guess I better fire up that YouTube video the lovely Nicole pointed me to since I’m already running color scenarios in my mind.)

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Snow’s silver lining: spectacular mittens

best new mittens knitting patterns

Sometimes I forget that mittens exist outside of storybooks. In my head, they belong to those picturesque, all-white, deep-winter wonderlands — which are (thankfully) totally foreign to my existence. But the nightly news the past few days, along with my Instagram feed, have reminded me that the world is full of people who need, wear and knit mittens. And as it happens, there have been a lot of great patterns released lately. These six are almost enough to make me wish for a snow day —

1. Classic Mittens from the Purl Bee (free)

2. Icy Water by Muraka Mari (free)

3. Adiri by Julia Trice

4. Knoll by Michele Wang

5. Jagged Ridge by Kiyomi Burgin

6. Pinion by Véronik Avery

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