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.
