Question about knitting with two colors in the round

How-to Questions
1

…this might be a stupid question but I can’t for the life of me figure it out!

When knitting in the round, when I go to change color, the color never matches up. It’s like my main color and contrasting color don’t match up the way that they are supposed to. Maybe I’ve taught myself knitting in the round wrongly…but when you first join in the round, and knit, doesn’t the end of that round stop where the tail is? I don’t know if I’m making sense or not…but what is the end of the first round? For example, I have 12 sts that I’ve put on three needles and joined in the round, once I knit the 4 sts on each needle, aren’t I done the first row? It doesn’t seem to work right when using more than one color and I feel stupid that I can’t figure it out…here, let me just ask this simple question:

Where is the end of the first row when you’re knitting in the round?

Please forgive me if this is stupid, but I’m frustrated because my colors aren’t matching up…please help!!!

2

you need to remember that knitting in the round isnt discrete rings of knitting stacked one on top of the other but is actually a continuous spiral of knitting. This meens that the end of one round does not match up exactly, but rather sits slightly below. this is often reffered to as a jog and shows up more with different colours than when a single colour is used
There are methods that can help reduce this jog so it is less noticable.

3

As mentioned, when you start your 2nd round, you have to go up a bit from the 1st round, hence your differing colors won’t match exactly.

Here’s a site I used to help diminish the “jog”. I tried them all, and they work well: Jogless stripes

4

I had the same problem with this hat:

http://www.ravelry.com/projects/hartleystudio/lillys-excellent-new-hat

and then I read Jared Flood’s article about the “jogless jog” and I tried it and it was so easy and looked great. I think this way is mentioned on the link in the earlier post but I love this woman’s pictures, it was super easy to understand and easy to do.

http://www.socknitters.com/kickback/joglessjog.htm

and if it’s good enough for Jared “brooklyntweed” Flood, it’s good enough for me!!!

Good luck!!

5

Thank you all so much, I thought I was doing something terribly wrong! Glad to know that I’m not!!! I’ll go look at those links, I appreciate all the help!