Stranded Knitting: Post 14 - Creating Stitches for Sleeves and/or Ribbing

Note: I had a brilliant plan to include a video of "creating stitches", but for some reason my computer all of a sudden will not load the video. If I can get it worked out, I will edit this to include a video later.

Creating stitches - from the ill fated video

Creating stitches for sleeves and/or ribbing

Notice I did not say “picking up stitches’ or “knitting up stitches”.

I sat in on a class once given by a fairly prominent designer. She asked the class what was preferred “picking up” or “knitting up”. Since at the time, I just kinda did what I did…and still do things that way, I suppose…I had to look up the difference between the two.

To the best of my knowledge, you can create stitches along either the cast on or cast off edge (for areas where the stitches are more or less traveling in the same the direction as the piece you are adding to…i.e. borders, hems, or edges) OR along a row or round side or edge (for areas where the stitches are traveling more or less perpendicular to the piece you are adding to…i.e. sleeves and neck and front ribbing or edging).

So back to the question at hand…“picking up” stitches involves scooping up identified strands with a needle or crochet hook, thus separating these strands from the body of the work. Presumably, you will eventually knit these stitches off the left needle to continue. The question by the designer/teacher was “isn’t that really a form of “knitting up”?

“Knitting up”, from what I can tell, is using the right needle or a crochet hook and scooping up an edge stitch…either one or both sides of the “V”, wrapping the yarn around the needle…or hook…and pulling through...which in my mind, feeble as it is, is really only “picking up” stitches as mentioned before and then knitting them up. Kinda the same thing as above, right?

To the point of the designer/teacher, when would you ever as a knitter to “pick up” stitches when you will eventually knit the stitches anyway?

This whole question is really only academic as far as I am concerned. I just do what I do, remember? In my mind (see “feeble” note above), any scooping up of threads or stitches has the potential of distorting the surrounding stitches.

So what I do is actually stab my right needle through the fabric…in the valley between the edge stitch and its neighbor, wrap the yarn around the needle, now in the back of the fabric and pull through to the front in a bit of a scooping motion to create a stitch.

Criosanna - front rib

 

Weyburn - front rib

Here’s an example of how it would work in practice…

Say I am creating stitches for a front cardigan rib. (Note: my patterns usually say “pick up and knit” or just “knit up” …figuring the knitter might be confused with “create x number of stitches”. Right now, I am considering changing to “create” with words of explanation in the definition section of the pattern…what ya think? Can I get away with that?)

Anyway, I need say…110 stitches for the cardigan button band. With right sides facing, I would divide the front edge into quarters or even eighths and mark these sections with a dpn…or locking marker.

Then all I have to do is get 13 or 14 stitches in every 1/8 section. I place a marker on my needle for every 25 stitches, if I am feeling ambitious…every 50 stitches, if not…just to keep count. This method eliminates the “three for four” type counting.

Remember also, that stitch and row gauge in stranded work is almost, if not exactly, equal. With this in mind, I have seen stranded knitters pick up one for one…and then decrease to the desired number when the first round is knitted...figuring because of the gauge, “one for one” and the “desired number” will not be too different.

Oh, I should mention that I use the smaller needle and the background shade to create the stitches. I have found that the created round will disappear a bit more with the smaller needle and more discrete shade.

Also…I haven’t said this in a while…but this is by no means a decree of what you should do. It is just the way I do things. It seems to work for me. If it doesn’t work for you, no worries.

Oh…and while I’m being honest…when it comes to creating stitches from cast on or cast off edges, I scoop up and knit the closer side of the perpendicular “chain” across the top edge. Is this inconsistent to what I just talked about? Well, yes…and I have two things to say…remember my “generally, but not always” caveat…and to quote Ralph Waldo Emerson “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”. ;)

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Stranded Knitting: Post 13 - Yarn Dominance

Yarn Dominance

Do you have a yarn dominance gene? We all do…some worse than others. Yarn or color dominance is a bit of a mystery that refers back to the way you hold your yarns.

Here‘s the deal… depending on how you hold your yarns, one color will be more prominent then the other. You may not see this on a single round…but over a few rounds, it can be very obvious. I say “can be” because this prominence can be very obvious in some knitters and not so obvious in others. Here is an example in a swatch I did for a beginning stranded class….

For the bottom panel, I held the background yarn (purple) in my right hand and the pattern yarn (green)in my left. For the top panel, I switched. Pattern in the right and background in the left.

I think my outcome is about average. I have seen dominance swatches where there is a big difference between the two. 

Here's what the back looks like:

You can see the difference a little bit better.

There are lots of explanations out there…but I have been trying to think of a way to describe it so it is easily understandable.

Ok…try this…take two fingers…your index and middle finger will do…and stick them out with your palm down…as if you are going to poke someone in both eyes...Three Stooges style.. These represent the two yarns coming off of your knitting round.

They are both on the same round, so they are level with each other…but they cannot stay that way if you work with them, right? Think of knitting the first “yarn”…then think of knitting with the second “yarn”. This second yarn cannot occupy the exact same space as the first as it travels to work the second stitch…it has to either go above or over the first yarn….or under or below it.

To represent this, turn your hand so your fingers are vertical…like you are pressing a door bell with both fingers…with your thumb on the top.

By turning your palm to the right or left, you change which finger is on top.

Now, line your top finger with the edge of a flat service, like a counter top.

The edge represents the needle with stitches. You will notice that the “yarn” on top has a very short distance to travel to get to the “needle”….while the “yarn” on the bottom has a fraction of a bit further to go to reach the “needle”. It is this extra distance that causes a slightly larger stitch…making stitches created from the lower yarn more prominent.

For years I either didn’t know this yarn dominance thing happened…or didn’t really care about it…or didn’t really think that it applied to me and my knitting…until I was taking a mittens class in which the instructor was working along with us on a stranded mitten. I had asked a question which involved her showing me her work…and it hit me…exact same yarn, exact same pattern…yet her mitten was more yellow (or white…I forget which) than mine.

So I started to read about it…but the over/above under/below stuff lost me. I was a two handed stranded knitter. What did I know of over under above below. I used one hand or the other…and generally put the color with the most stitches in my right hand (since I started out as a western knitter). I just didn’t get it.

Finally, the head smacking moment arrived and I got it. It is amazing how you read something enough times and it will finally make sense. I also could finally translate the over/above, under/below thing to the two handed method. The yarn in the left hand is the under/below yarn…the yarn which will dominate….and since I generally want the pattern to be prominent, I put the pattern yarn in my left hand and the background yarn in my right.

The final revelation came when I read that the obviousness of the dominance is a sliding scale. So the knitter with the minimal difference between the two won't see what all of the fuss is about...until you see a swatch where there is a huge difference.

Bottom line, though, whether you understand all of the explanations…my two fingers on the edge of the counter included…the one thing that rang true for me was to be consistent. That is all you really need to know in the end…be consistent.

How dominant is your yarn dominance gene? Leave a comment.

Next week: Creating stitches for sleeves and/or ribbing

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Stranded Knitting: Post 12 - Using Markers

Some of my markers...the rest are either in that mysterious place all things go to hide...or are at work in some UFO.

Using markers

A whole section on using markers? Seriously?

Markers can be very useful…in more ways than indicating the beginning of the round.

Here is a list of how I use markers for stranded work. Granted some of these methods can also be used for non-stranded work…and odds are, you probably have used markers in all of these ways. Maybe you have a few marker uses not mentioned below. If so, please leave a comment. I'd love to hear what you have come up with.

Beginning of the round – This one is obvious. Stranded work is generally worked in the round, so a marker to indicate the beginning of the round is very useful. It is also helpful if this beginning marker is different from any other markers used. This can be as easy as using a brass marker as a beg rnd marker and the rest colors…or as cute as a squirrel as the beg rnd and acorns for the rest of the makers.

Counting cast on stitches – When casting on a large number of stitches, markers can be used to indicate groups of stitches...i.e. placing a marker every 10 or 25 stitches. You can do this a couple of ways. Count to the desired stitch number (10 or 25), stop and place a marker…or cast on a larger number of stitches, then stop, count desired stitch number and place an open marker. The later method allows you to cast on mindlessly until you get tired and then count.

Or you can do what I do….start off casting on 25 stitches, stop and place a marker…then get tired of counting and stopping and just cast on mindlessly and count later. :)

Set off steek stitches – Another obvious one. Placing a marker before and after steek stitches helps to delineate these stitches from the rest of the garment…and means you don’t inadvertently carry your stranded pattern right through the steek. (Ask how I know this!) These markers are also good for indicating when you need to work some shaping on either side of the opening for which the steek is a placeholder…i.e. front/back neck or armhole opening.

Set off motif repeats – Like most things that look complicated, when you break them down into smaller sections, the work becomes easier to manage. As applied to stranded knitting, placing markers between motif repeats reduces the work to the size of the stitch repeat. In other words, in a pattern with a 16 stitch repeat, instead of worrying about a round of 256 stitches, with markers you can concentrate on only 16 stitches at a time.

It is also helpful if these motif markers are different than the steek and beg rnd markers. 

Indicate front and back – Sometimes it is useful to have different stitch makers for the front than for the back…if nothing more than to give you a sense of progress.

My favorite markers are the little rubber rings (o-rings). For the longest time, you could only get these rings in black and red. Armed with little bags of rubber rings, I used black makers for the front and red makers for the back. Somehow moving from the black markers to the red markers made me feel like I was getting somewhere…a sense of progress, like I said.

Now I can find these little rings in all sorts of colors…red, orange, green, etc.  Do I still use them in different colors on the front and back of a garment? Usually not…hey, I am lucky to put a hand on any markers, as they are generally cohabitating in mixed colors in the bottom of my knitting bag. Time to clean out the knitting bag and sort the markers into colors? Yes. Do I have time? Not in the least.

Indicate sections of garment – Like separating motif repeats, when it comes to indicating sections of a garment, markers are the best.

·         A marker at the right and left side can help with waist shaping, as well as where to place armhole steeks.

·         A marker at center front can help with placing the front neck…especially a V-neck. This marker can also help with centering a motif….which we will talk about in a bit.

·         Markers placed to set off thumb and/or finger stitches can be very useful when working on mittens or gloves.

·         I am not much of a sock knitter (blasphemy, I know), but I would presume heel stitches as well as bottom and top stitches would be benefit from the use of markers.

Visual cue to weave in new colors – This is one of my favorites….mostly because I like to weave in new colors a few stitches before the end of the previous round. The trouble is I kept mindlessly knitting and before I knew it I was at the beginning of the round and I hadn’t woven in the new color. This revelation was followed by a heavy sigh (or loud-ish oath, depending) and tinking the round back a few stitches to do the weaving.

Now I have a different colored marker 6 or 8 stitches before the end of the round to wake me up to check to see if a new color was needed for the next round. This one marker considerably cut down on my tinking quota…and oath making.

Visual cue to end decreases – Not necessarily exclusive to stranded work, but you know those instruction that say something like “decrease 1 st on either side of the marker every 4^th rnd 8 times” followed by the stitch count you are supposed to have at the end of the decreases?

Say this is a top down sleeve  with decreases to the wrist....and the final count at the wrist is 56 sts after the decrease. I was doing the decreases as indicated and every so often counting the stitches on the needle to see how close I was to the needed 56 sts. One day it struck me how to use a marker to help this process.

Say your stitch count at the top of the sleeve is 122 stitches. If you subtract 56 from 122, you get a total of 66 stitches decreased. Since you are decreasing on either side of the marker, you will decrease 2 stitches per round. Then you count 33 sts (66/2) from the marker and place another different maker. (You can also place another marker on the other side of the central marker, if you would like, but it is not necessary.)

Then you can just decrease until you reach this new marker without stopping to count stitches or keeping track of the number of times you decrease. Now all I need to count is whatever the round count is before I need to decrease again...every 4th round...or every 6th round...etc.

You are probably reading this and thinking…that is a heck of a lot of markers, missy.

Here’s how I handle them…

Beg rnd - brass

Motif makers – any color but red, white, or black

Section markers (center front and sides) - red

Steeks – black

Visual cue markers - white

You understand this is when I have all of the markers separated into little color coordinated piles. The reality is I will sometimes use an open or locking marker hanging off of another marker for the beg rnd….or barring that, I’ll use brass or white…something that will stand out…as beg rnd and whatever I can put my hands on for the rest. 

This “whatever I can grab” method does mean I have to pay attention to what job the markers are doing as I come to them. Sometimes easier on the front end isn’t always easier on the back end.

How do you use your markers?

Next week: Color dominance. 

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