HELP I’m knitting a hat on circular needles ( it has snowflakes ) I am using yarn bobbins and can’t figure them out? They keep moving farther away from my repeated pattern. I feel like I have to cut the yarn and move them all the time . This can’t be right What am I dong wrong :??
JulieThe problem is that you’re trying to knit intarsia in the round. It’s not really easy to do, some say impossible.
It is possible with a lot of slipping of stitches and purling back, but if your snowflakes are going all the way around the hat, you might want to do stranded knitting instead.
Thanks Ingrid, but what is strand knitting?
JulieStranded knitting is also called Fair Isle knitting where you carry the yarn across the back of your work. Amy has video on it here
The main thing to worry about with stranded knitting is that your loops get too long between stitches. You can trap them in your working yarn if they seem to get too long, but generally if you make sure to stretch your stitches out on the right needle they won’t get tight and pucker.
Is there a way to look at the pattern?
The problem with doing it with the bobbins is that all your snowflake stitches go to one end but have no way to go back the other way. That is why intarsia is usually done back and forth. With stranded, the yarn follows you around.
Ingrid, you are so smart!! I get it now. Thanks again for your help. Guess I’ll be frogging. And thanks for answering so quickly! Don’t know how to put anything on but words.I think my son will be here friday so I’m gonna have him show me how to do pictures,web stuff, maybe even a blog , so I can show patterns and my finished stuff. I know it must be hard to try and help us without seeing the pattern.
JulieIt took me a long time to get a camera and figure out how to post pictures. It wasn’t as hard as I expected. Hang in there!