Best increase colour work

How-to Questions
1

Hello! I’m finally on the sleeves of the thorn cardigan and I’m having a moment of paralysis on how to best do the increases. I need to increase each end of the row so I’m assuming M1R and M1L rather than KFB or does it not matter too much? Should I knit one stitch before doing the increase for seaming.

Sorry, the pattern just says to follow the chart rather than spelling it out for me :joy:

2 Likes
2

Mirrored M1s will work well.
I don’t like KFB much because of the bump it makes on one stitch but salmonmac introduced me to knit front slip back which I like a lot, no bump. Maybe try it? It doesn’t give you the option of changing the colour of the slipped stitch though whereas M1 you can make any colour.

Working a stitch in from the edge will make seaming easier, it can be more confusing on the colour work for me but that could just be me!

3

Thanks so much Creations! I’ll do the M1s. I have a feeling that doing this with the colour work is going to make my brain hurt. :joy:

I thought I’d done this before with the octopus but then I remembered I did a 2 stitch edge for seaming and hid the increases in there.

1 Like
4

I sometimes get holes with M1s, So I prefer lifted increases, done one or two stitches away from the selvedge, but it is really hard to tell afterwards which row you did them on. So I only do them if M1s don’t work with the yarn for that project, and have to mark or closely count rows.

Shown in the green yarn (scroll down a bit):
https://www.asatricosa.com/m1-raised/

Probably won’t affect this project, but note that lifted increases will not work in stripes if you need to increase in a row shortly after a colour change. That’s because you are pulling up a loop from a previous row, which may be in the previous colour, and might make a blip in your stripes.

1 Like
5

I’m a fan of lifted increases but I agree that they don’t work in every situation. Sometimes an e-loop gives the same effect as a M1 without pulling on the strand between sts. A yarn over on the previous row then the increase at the yarn over also works by putting a bit of extra yarn into the strand between sts.

2 Likes