Good morning, knitters! I hope your weekend was full of fun, food and knitting as mine was. I want to send out a great big thank you to everyone who downloaded the Maizie Pullover pattern over the weekend. The success of this pattern has been phenomenal! Thanks to you, Maizie went straight to number 1 on Ravelry’s Hot Right Now and stayed there until yesterday afternoon! At present, I think it’s sitting at about eighth. Also, I need to thank the lovely Dana M. without who’s talents Maizie would still be just a great idea.
The success of Maizie has me really stoked about some nifty new releases I have ready to launch for this month’s Bayside theme. Bayside will be focused on nautical knits, color blocking and summer fibers like linen and hemp and will take a special look at some of the really interesting cotton blends that are available for our knitting pleasure.
Can we really do a nautical theme without talking about stripes? Don’t think so! Over the years, I’ve enjoyed using stripes to combine colors, bust my stash and create dynamic color movement in fabric. (The Mrs Pickles Hat and Handwarmers and the Mrs. Pickles Practically Jogless Cowl are forever free patterns). I love the jaunty quality that stripes impart to garments and accessories, and though stripes are fun and easy to knit, there are a couple of techniques that make knitted stripes a little more pleasing.
For starters, you may find that stripes do not line up nicely at the join, even when color changes are worked at the beginning of a round. There are several methods to overcome this problem, but here’s my favorite:
To make jog-free stripes, knit the first stitch of a color change with the new and old color together. Knit the rest of the round with just the new color. When you get back around to the first stitch knit it (both colors together) with the new color. After working a few stitches with the new color, tug firmly on the old yarn until the stitches line up. (…not too tightly, now, or the first column of stitches will be too tight and short). Do this little tug while the stitch is still on the needle tip rather than the cable in order to maintain proper tension.
Secondly, as you carry non-working colors up behind your working yarn, you might find that a little vertical ridge is created. Also, it is possible to carry non-working yarns too tightly which forms a little vertical pucker. Here are a couple of ways to deal with that:
Rather than carrying the non-working yarn up as if for stranded color work, I find I can just ‘trap’ the carried yarn between the working yarn and the work. Sometimes, I find it better not to carry the MC at all, rather to let the non-working yarn just lay behind the stripe. Then, while weaving in ends, simply weave over the MC strand to hold it in place. For more information on carrying yarn behind stripes, check out this great post at PurlSoho.
Lastly, here are a couple of good ol’ fashioned common sense tips for knitting projects with perfect stripes:
1) Make your color changes in an inconspicuous area. When knitting striped mittens or gloves, change colors along the back side of the hand, the edge where your pinky is. For pullovers and cardigans, change colors under the arm. For seamless yoke sweaters, change colors behind the right shoulder.
2) Tension while changing colors is oh-so important. Nothing gives away a color change like the loose or sloppy stitches that can occur at the beginning of a round.
I’m going to “celebrate the stripe” this week by offering a little discount on everything featuring stripes in my Ravelry shop. That means the Annapolis Wrap, the Dalrymple Cowl and the Yew Tree Cowl are 50% off this week! Just pop your patterns of choice into your shopping cart, enter the enter code STRIPE-AHOLIC at checkout and cast on. (Feel free to share a link to this page with your friends, but please don’t give out the coupon code. It helps me a lot when folks come here to visit.) If you like these little discounts (I usually offer them on Friday mornings) and are interested in my work, I’d love to see you over at the new Ravelry group Friends of Littlechurch Knits. Until we meet again, happy knitting!
