Okie dokie. I spend more time searching for answers than I do knitting.
Ingrid posted this in another thread explaining how to add the second color (it was a red item with a white heart in it):
Quote:
What I do is kind of hard to explain, but Iāll try. A few stitches before the color change, start weaving in the end of the white yarn by inserting your needle to work the red stitch, then put the white yarn over the right needle tip from back to frontācounter clockwiseāwrap the red, remove the white and finish the red stitch. This should catch the white yarn. It has to come up from under the red to work, though, so you may have to play with it a bit.
Do it for a few stitches before and you wonāt have to worry about weaving in the end later.
It is quite helpful, but can you explain how to āwrapā and by āback to frontā would the tail be behind the right needle then?
Edit: Messed around with it and I came up with what looks like this. Does that look right? The white yarn seems to be held in place OK and it doesnāt show through on the right side.
Thanks for the link Nikki!!! Pictures [I]always[/I] help. Itās very awkward trying to follow hold it english since I knit continental, but I think I have it. Still didnāt seem like that end would stay, but I tugged and stretched and though it did shrink up into the knitting a bit itās still holding.
I did another test swatch. Hereās the front(which looks great) and the back. Is it ok to have the diagonal and vertical jumps from one row to the next?
Itās best if you try not to make such long floats on wearable garments. Fingers and toes tend to catch in them. You can weave them in across the back just like you did the tail yarns.
I could have sworn I had a photo of the back of my first project, but I canāt find it. :??
It looks like the yarn is attached like I do it, but I think Iād do intarsia for that patternāmore ends, less floats and less chance of pulling in.
Thanks gals. Actually that was just a sample something that doesnāt follow any patternā¦ I just knit that to practice. The piece Iām doing is an eyeball actually that gets folded in half so the floats would be on the inside. I did read about not extending the floats past 5 stitches, somewhere else was stated not past 1", and another site said not longer than 3 stitches.
My inexperience with intarsia and stranding makes me feel like Iām doing a combination of the two of them but I guess it doesnāt matter so long at the tails are secured and the floats arenāt too long.
āToo longā is subjective. For a baby item you want almost no floats or very small ones. For something that will never be touched or have anything inside it, if your tension is reasonable, you might be happy with huge floats, or the same if the wool were very sticky. Go with your gut.
Thatās so true. If the inside is hidden, you could weave curse words with the ends and nobody would know.:teehee:
As for how long the floats areāyou have to use your judgement there, too. If youāre knitting at a gauge of 7 or 8 stitches per inch, then it would be silly to not have a float over 3 stitches. If youāre using a larger gauge wool, then 3 stitches could made a difference.:shrug:
I have a related question (well, at least I think itās related!).
If/when I pick up stitches, what do I do with the loose end of the yarn? Do I tie it to the needle, feed it through some other stitches, or what? I understand that I can weave in the ends, but do I do that before I actually do the pick-up?
I also encountered this when I was trying to do a keyhole scarf. You knit half, then go back and do the other half. Well, when I was doing the second half, I didnāt know how to fasten the end of the yarn to anything.
What I usually do is pick up the first stitch with the yarn strand, then pick up the next stitch or two with both the strand and the tail. It gives a double loop in the stitch, but you just knit/purl it as normal and you canāt really tell. Then the yarn is secure and the end is there to weave in later on.
This has been an interesting thread since I just got done doing a hat in the round using stranding. I tried my best at the catch technique but the color shows thorough. I also thought I was stranding loosely but thereās a small pucker where the colors change. Iām disappointed that I didnāt do better after all that work. If anyone has an words of encouagement, Iād be happy to hear them.
Thanks for the link Nikki!!! Pictures [I]always[/I] help. Itās very awkward trying to follow hold it english since I knit continental, but I think I have it. Still didnāt seem like that end would stay, but I tugged and stretched and though it did shrink up into the knitting a bit itās still holding.
