We have lots of weather today in Leicester, in the Middle Lands of England. It has been cool, overcast and dreary, with darkness alleviated only by rain. Yesterday, I had to put the heating on - in midsummer 😱.
Well, today @needleworkmonday has set us a challenge - give a sneak preview of a work in progress (WiP) today, Monday 28 June, and show the finished masterpiece next week, Monday 5 July, as creatively as you can. 😵!
Win Hive-Engine Tokens for comments
I'm adding to the fun with a little side challenge to see if you can guess what my finished masterpiece is going to be. I've included some clues below (marked: CLUE 😂) to help you. All the comments will go into the Wheel of Names, and some lucky winners will be chosen at random.
Here it is: the Magical Mystery Tour!
Middle: I was recommended some cotton yarn - so much cooler for these items in the summer (CLUE).
Right: I was a bit worried by the tension and the messy edges in the swatch, but it is okay as I am going to be knitting in the round (CLUE).
Left: I loved the patterns on the wrong side of the fabric. I think the change in fabric thickness is going to help with the shaping and a better fit to help these items stay up when you are wearing them (CLUE).
I got the idea from @mariannewest's post last week (CLUE).
Here's the finished and blocked swatch. Can you guess what I am knitting yet? Check the clues above and leave your answer in the comments below for a chance to win some tokens.
Swatching
I really enjoyed swatching for this item. I was making a swatch to check that the tension matched the pattern tension over stocking stitch and over the charted pattern that appears on part of the so item (I almost gave it away there)!
I got in a terrible muddle with the two different colours and the cable on the circular needles I was using (just look at the bird's nest under the swatch in the right hand picture in the photo collage above). At one point, one of the yarns was held tight and I couldn't pull enough through to make a stitch.
I was wondering if I was doing it correctly, or if there was just an easier way to control the different strands of yarn. That's when I started to research and came across two things that were new to me. One was yarn-hand and the other was yarn dominance.
Yarn-hand refers to how you control the two (or more) different colours as you knit across a row. There are many different methods, including holding both colours in your right or left hand, or one colour in each hand. Or you can do what I did, pick up and drop each colour as you want to make a stitch with it.
The last method is completely okay. I was worried that it would affect the tension, but in fact it doesn't. You can see from the finished swatch that the centre piece with the pattern is narrower, but this is to do with distortions to the shape of the stitch (it becomes taller and more square compared to knitting with a single colour), rather than tension.
However, it is a very slow and laborious method, so I am doing some more swatching to learn how to hold the yarn in the other three ways as well - so I can choose whichever method I want. This will mean learning what is known in England as "continental or "German" knitting (it is neither, but that's the traditional naming here).
Yarn dominance refers to which colour looks more dominant in the knitted pattern. Yarn dominance happens because the dominant stitches are slightly larger than the non-dominant stitches. It has nothing to do with whether the colour is light or dark.
When you do two or more colour work, strands or "floats" of yarn are carried at the back of the knitting until you want to use them again to make a stitch. How you manage these strands or floats at the back creates the different effects on the front or right side of the knitting, and determines which colour will dominate.
On the back or wrong side of my sample (left hand picture in the photo collage), you can see the strands floating across the back of the fabric. I've used parallel floats - each strand runs in a straight line, but I didn't check which colour was the bottom float in each row, so sometimes it's the background colour and sometimes it's the pattern colour.
Source In this sample by Roxanne Richardson, you can see three different effects in the single column colours. At the bottom, red was the bottom float and dominates. At the top, grey was the bottom float and dominates. In the middle, Roxanne has used a different method of carrying the floats where the strands are rotated between colour changes, so neither colour dominates.
Source Here, Roxanne is showing the back or wrong side of a sample. Where her fingers are, you can see an example of rotating floats or strands. In the section below you can see an example of parallel floats or strands.
Source Here's the front or right side of Roxanne's swatch, where she has labelled each section with the technique she has used. It's very subtle, a bit like when you have your eyes tested and they ask whether the green or the red is more dominant ... or are they both the same ...🤗
You can find out more about multi-colour knitting in these three videos by Roxanne Richardson:
1. Stranded Colour Work 101 tension and yarn hand
2. Parallel and Rotating Floats
3. Trapping Floats
Did you guess what I'm knitting for the big reveal next week? Remember to leave me a comment with your answer below 🙂.
Saturday Savers Club
I run a savings club every Saturday over on the @eddie-earner account. We're aiming to save £670 ($800) by the end of the year using the 365 day savings challenge. You can join any time of the year and set your own goals and plans (some people are saving Hive, others Bitcoin, some their local currency). We share savings tips and there's a free giveaway every week.
Three things newbies should do in their first week and, for most things, forever afterwards!
