Top Tips for Stranded Colourwork
Stranded colourwork is a way of using more than one colour in your knitting projects. In stranded colourwork knitting, different coloured yarns are carried (or stranded) behind the work until they are used in the pattern. The technique can be used to create striking all-over patterns, or smaller bands of decoration. It appears in many knitting traditions, including those from Fair Isle (Shetland), Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland.
I love stranded colourwork because it can look really visually stunning, but it is also deceptively simple to knit! It’s usually knit in the round, so you only have to strand yarn at the back of your work, and there are rarely more than two colours in any given row. As with any new technique, there are a few things to watch out for which will make the whole experience of knitting with more than one colour easier and more enjoyable. Here are some of my top tips for successful stranded colourwork projects.
Keep your floats loose
The floats in stranded colour work are the bits of yarn that sit at the back of the work. When a colour isn’t in use it is stranded behind the knitted stitches until it’s needed, at which point it’s picked up again, and the other colour becomes a float. Floats can range in length from one stitch upwards. If a float is too long, it will catch on things as you put on or wear the garment, but if your floats are too tight then they will pull the garment in, distorting the pattern and making it smaller or tighter. Loose floats are less of a problem than tight floats, and one of the most common issues when learning to knit stranded colourwork is pulling the floats too tight. There are a few things you could try to avoid this.
Spread stitches out on your needle
Your floats should be long enough to allow the finished fabric to stretch. You can spread the stitches that you have just knit out on your needle before switching colours to ensure that the float is long enough.
Use wooden needles
This won’t work for everyone, but many people find that their gauge is looser on wooden needles. They also grip the yarn better, making your stitches less likely to slide around on your needles.
Go up a needle size
Lots of people find they need to go up a needle size (or more) when knitting colourwork.
Knit inside out
Normally when knitting in the round, you knit across the front needle and the right side of the work faces outwards. If you turn it inside out and knit across the back needle, then the floats at the back of the work will be on the outside of the circle, so they will be longer.
Practise yarn management
It can be really easy to get in a tangle when you’re knitting with more than one colour - you have a whole other ball of wool to worry about. To avoid them getting twisted up, keep one yarn on either side of you. You could also try putting your yarns in different bowls or bags.
Choose a woolly yarn
A nice fuzzy woolly yarn will mean that the stitches grip onto each other and mesh together to make a more coherent finished fabric. Gaps between colours will close up and the work will be smoother. Woollen spun yarns are perfect for colourwork.
Catch your floats
If a float is long, you should catch or trap it to prevent it catching on fingers, buttons or jewellery. You can do this by twisting the working yarn around the floated yarn to anchor the float to the back of the work. How many stitches counts as long depends on the weight of yarn that you’re using, and is down to personal preference. I normally try to catch any floats that are longer than about 1.5cm.
Try to avoid catching floats in the same place on consecutive rows, otherwise it might start to show through on the front. And if you forget to catch floats at all, it’s perfectly possible to do it once you’ve finished knitting by weaving over them when you’re weaving in ends (or using a spare bit of yarn).
Don’t judge your work until it’s been blocked
Stranded colourwork can look a bit lumpy and uneven when it’s first worked, however experienced a knitter you are! Blocking really does fix most things. It allows the stitches to relax and even out. The yarn will plump up to fill any gaps and everything will look much nicer. It’s also possible to manually manipulate stitches if you still have any that are too loose or too tight after blocking. Just use the tip of your needle to pull on the stitch, or gently pull the float from behind.
Weave in ends at the end
Don’t worry about weaving in your ends as you go along - when you come to the end of a colour, just break the yarn leaving a tail and keep knitting. You can neaten up colour changes and weave in ends at the end of your project.
You can still fix mistakes
You can still fix any mistakes just like you would with single colour knitting. It’s possible to knit backwards stitch by stitch, take out an entire row, and even drop down and pick up a float instead of a stitch if you need to change the colour of a stitch. If you spot a mistake in your colourwork way back, you can use duplicate stitch to sew over it in the correct colour.
Swatch in the round
Knitting stranded colourwork flat can be a bit of a pain as you need to work on the reverse, stranding floats across the front of the work on alternate rows. Your gauge when knitting flat is also likely to be quite different than when knitting in the round. Always try to swatch in the round if this is how you will be knitting your project - it will be easier and more accurate.
Be aware of yarn dominance
When you knit stranded colourwork you will generally have one yarn that is above the other when you pick it up (however you hold your yarn), and one that is below. The colour on the bottom is the dominant colour. It travels slightly further across the front of the work, and stitches in this colour will sit forward ever so slightly.
I’ve never really noticed the effect of colour dominance on the front of a piece, but it is really clear at the back. The dominant colour sits further towards the front, which means that you see more of the non-dominant colour at the back of the work.
You should avoid changing the dominant colour mid pattern. This means you should always hold the same yarn on top as you are working.
