This isn’t a question, just sharing my surprise.
I’ve been in communication with Berge de France about this pattern
I will say, I had a very quick response which is great. My question form somehow didn’t send through the pattern number so there was a little delay where the tech help didn’t know which pattern I was asking about but even so they tried to be helpful.
I was asking about how to manage long floats on the wrong side of the fabric. It is intarsia knit but some of the colour blocks extend more like stripes into one another meaning an extremly long float before an intarsia join. Catching the float on the wrong side (ie using a stranded technique to reduce the float length) isn’t possible because it happens at the same time as reverse stockinette to make the textured detail.
I thought something might be missing in the pattern which could indicate how to manage these long strands. Or perhaps i was expected to know a common technique that I wasn’t aware of.
No, they are just left there.
Berge de France has very helpfully sent me photos of the inside of the sample piece. The floats are not managed but just left.
Some span 30+ stitches!!! That’s not only big enough to snag a finger in when getting dressed, but an entire arm! How this would hold up to being washed I do not know, even with careful hand washing those huge strands would surely get pulled on and the piece would be ruined! (It’s labeled machine wash, no idea how it could hold up with other things in the machine getting tangled in those strands).
It really makes no sense to me when I’ve seen so many videos by expert or master knitters advising strands shouldn’t be more than an inch or so wide.
Had I bought the kit from Berge de France it would have been £81.95 and i would have been quite annoyed if it was ruined after a couple of wears.
As it is, I only bought the pattern for £2.20 and my yarn was not bought specifically for this pattern so I feel no loss there.
The knitter who replied from Berge said she has not made this top but would probably cut the strands. Certainly some of them are so long it would make more sense to do so, but this wasn’t done on their sample. Also the strands vary in length, where it might be say 10 or 15 sts it is too long to leave hanging but seems a drag to cut and weave in (and I’m usually not shy of a zillion ends to weave). The lengths of 30 + it seems more worth while to cut and weave.
Soooooo…
I don’t know if this has a name or is a usual thing but it’s my solution.
I am catching my colour change a stitch earlier than normal intarsia to lock it in (so the front leg gets locked travelling right and doesn’t get pulled left by the float), then floating it behind, doing my best get the right tension (not so easy on 30 sts) and using it to make the next group of stitches in that colour. Then, on the next row up, I am lifting that long strand to catch it up on the wrong side every 3 or 4 sts to make it into small floats.
It’s all a bit of an experiment, i might end up frogging it and make my own pattern after all.