Hello! I’m working on my first fair isle project. I saw in a book that says that when one colour is used over, say, seven stitches, the unused yarn, when put into use again, would leave a loose strand on the wrong side. A solution to this is to “weave in” the unused yarn along the way so it doesn’t hang loosely.
I have trouble understanding how I could weave the yarn through? My yarn is still attached to the balls it comes in and can’t be woven as I would normally do when I weave in loose ends of yarn that is cut from a ball. Any suggestions?
I am not an expert, but what little I did was just take the unused skein of yarn and lift it over the yarn you are working with, this allows your working yarn to trap the yarn you are not using. I do this every 2-3 stitches making sure not to tighten the unused yarn too much as this will cause puckers on the right side of your work.
When you’re doing stranded knitting, you don’t want to work too tightly or have your ‘floats’ of yarn across the back to tight or you will get puckering.
The way I catch the long floats is this–it catches the yarn without twisting anything.
Insert your needle as if to make the next stitch. Bring your carried yarn up over the right tip from back to front. Make sure it comes up from under the working yarn. Wrap the stitch with your working yarn as normal, but before you pull it through to knit it, remove the yarn you laid over the top of the needle. It may take a few tries to get it, but it works really well.
Ooh thanks for that tip! I do something similar and it seems to be working out.
Oh no, I’m generally a pretty tight knitter and I’ve been pulling on the strands so that they don’t look all loose… does puckering mean that the right side becomes more bunched up? Because mine looks a little like that now, though I thought that once I block it and stretch it horizontally, it might even out. Would that work?
FairIsles need to be blocked, and that will help the puckers. One way to avoid them is to stretch out the knitting on the right needle when you change colors to make the float as loose as possible.