As you all know, I do lots of charity knitting, usually children's sweaters for various agency's. My favorite sweater to knit is a striped raglan. I want to tell you about a method that leaves you with only a few ends to weave in, rather than tons of them, which just discourages you from knitting stripes.
Here is a striped sweater that is going to the shelter. It is a striped raglan using 3 colors, 2 green shades & 1 gray shade.
As you can see, the stripes are a series of thicker & thinner stripes. If I cut the yarn at every color change I am going to have a very discouraging number of ends to weave in. To solve this problem, I am not going to cut the yarn. Instead I am going to carry it up the right hand side of the knit.
This picture shows how it looks on the purl side.
Every so many rows I will hook the contrast color on the end needle so that I don't have a bunch of long floats on the side of the knit. This technique works for hand knitters as well as machine knitters. The trick is to keep the yarn that is being carried, loose. If you pull it too tight it will pull the side of the knit up on that side.
9 comments:
You are so smart to be able to knit on a machine and match stripes at the same time!
mj
You are so smart to be able to knit on a machine and match stripes at the same time!
mj
I don't know how smart I am, but thx for the compliment.
I haven't been brave enough to try stripes yet, but you make it look easy. I've carried colours along the side in hand-knitting before, and your sweater looks great inside, Sheryl!
Stripes are really easy to do, esp. if you have a color changer. If you don't have one, or there isn't one made for your machine, just hold the extra colors out of the way (up to 3) in your left hand & knit with your right. Or you can hook them around the side of the machine too, when not in use.
I make lots of stripes on my Silver Reed 860. It knits worsted weight yarns. I just hold the extra colors out of the way, while I knit the in-work color with my right hand. I bought an extra color changer to my SR 840 & am using the mast to it for my SR 860 so that I can use up to 4 colors with it. Works very well.
This is exactly what I want to do! But my floats are running along the outside of my fabric and not along the inside by the purl side of the fabric. I'm knitting circularly on a double bed machine. Do you know what I'm doing wrong?
Thanks in advance,
Erica
hi would you by any chance have an in detail tutorial of how to do this im very new to machine knitting and seem to get all tangled up when trying it
You can't use this method if you are knitting circular. It just won't work. Sorry :)
Hi! Sorry I didn't get back to you before but just saw you question.
If you are knitting stripes it is better to knit the rows in increments of 2. In other words the stripes must be an even number, 2-4-6-8 etc. Keep the yarn on the right hand side of the knitting. It helps to have a color changer but you don't have to. Say that you are knitting a 4 row stripe pattern. Knit the first 4 rows. then remove the yarn from the carriage & insert the 2nd color in the carriage. You can take the first color & hook it at the end of the bed on the right hand side, or hold it out of the way with your free hand. Knit the next 4 rows with the 2nd color. Switch the colors out with the 2nd color hooked at the end of the bed & the 1st color back in the carriage. Continue in this fashion until you have finished the garment piece, always ending on the right hand side of the machine bed. :)
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