when you’re working stripes in your knitting,and if you’re working with the same two or three or four – however many colors,you have the option of cutting the yarn every time you start with a new color, or if you’regoing to keep using that same color of yarn, you have another option of just carrying thatyarn up the side of your work and not having so many ends to weave in when you’re finished. which is ideal. to do that it’s the same when you’re knittingback and forth, or if you’re knitting in the round. the issues with tension and carrying the yarnup and everything else are the same.
it’s a quick little technique, it will saveyou a lot of time. let’s take a look. here i have this little knitted piece andi’m switching from yellow to purple every two rows. and i only have one yellow end and one purpleend because i’m carrying the yarn up the side of the work. now this really only works if you’re knittingfor a back and forth piece – not knitting in the round. you need to knit an even number of rows, sothat you can keep swapping things out over
on the same side of the work. you want to knit down and back, a multipleof two rows, even number. i have knit two rows in yellow, and i’mready to switch to purple. and the purple of course is already attached. before i get started, i want to intertwinethese two threads a little bit. so i’m just going to flop one yarn overthe other. because i don’t want any loose loops hangingoff the side of my work. and i’m going to put – you see what i did there? all i did was flopone yarn over the other like that.
and this is kind of important when you’redoing a two row repeat, but really much more important if you have more rows of knitting,because there is more of an option for a longer loop on the side of the work. put my needle in. wrap it with the purple yarn, and that firststitch, the tension is pretty important. if you pull it too tightly, you’ll bunchup the sides of your work, so you want to make sure you that you give the work a tugas you tighten up that stitch. and then you knit across normally. or purl, or whatever your pattern’s tellingyou to do.
the only technique here is on the side ofthe work. okay, so that’s the technique. you’ll see here that there is a tiny bitmore bulk on the side of the work, because there is one extra strand running up the side. but even knitting this flat, you can’t reallysee, you can’t really see it on the right the wrong side of the work you do see theselittle twists where i flopped one yarn over the other to keep there from being big loops. this is a great technique that will save youa ton of time from weaving in a million ends every time you change to a different colorwhen you’re working stripes.
and that’s carrying up the yarn for stripes. [music]