Having trouble with stripes in the round

#1

I’m working on the London Beanie (I’ve made two), but I’m not getting good results where the stripes meet. The first one I made, I didn’t do anything but knit around and around (breaking off the yarn when I switched colors). This looked awful. The next one I made, I slipped the first stitch of the first row of the color change. Looks slightly better, but not much. I can’t seem to understand how to improve this. Can anyone help?

There are pics of my results from my first two tries on my blog: www.KnitToEnd.blogspot.com

Thanks!

#2

From the pics (2nd attempt) it looks like you didn’t do a full round of the stripe so you end up with one st of the new color showing up in the previous row. Make sure, if you have a 2-row stripe, that you have 2 sts of the new color on top of each other before you begin the new color (by whichever anti-jog method you choose).

IOW:

XXX
[COLOR=“Red”]VVV[/COLOR]
[COLOR=“Red”]VVV[/COLOR]
XXX

You don’t want this:

XXX
[COLOR=“Red”]VV[/COLOR]X
X[COLOR=“Red”]VV[/COLOR]
XXX

cam

#3

This can be a product of jogging, tht you get becaue ircular knittin is atually a spiral rather than stacked rings.

When starting the hat cast on one extra stitch. When you go to join, slip stitch 1 and knit from stitch 2 as normal, so the oin is effectiely on stitch 2. When you get to the last stitch of the round, knit it together with the slipped stitch. This eliminates the jog and makes subsequent stripes more lined up.

Also for the stripped section, try carrying the yarn up the inside of the hat instead of breaking at each colour change. Just twist the yarn around each other at the beggining of each round (taking special care at the colour change rounds) to prevent flouts and keep it all tucked in. This will create and artificial seem on the inside of the hat but will reduce the number of ends to weave in and will help to marry the colour changes.

#4

You can read about avoiding that problem in this pattern

http://www.knitty.com/issuespring03/PATTtiptoe.html

#5

I like these instructions best. She’s very clear with large pictures.

#6

Thanks for the advice. Jan in CA: I had found those directions before, but still didn’t seem to understand (that is what I tried to do in hat #2) and must not have done right. The directions suggested by Sue (on the knitty site) seemed a little clearer to me, so I’m going to try it again. Thanks for all the help!!!