Tuesday Tutorial!

 I wanted to get into a few more details about how I knit stranded socks (and sleeves and other small circumference stranded items). I realize that last time I mentioned it in the post about socks, I didn't actually show a great picture to give you any idea of what I was talking about! XD

Stranding just means that you're holding two or more colors and knitting with them in pattern to make designs and motifs. There are quite a few regional conventions and traditions for stranded knitting, Fair Isle and Norwegian being two of them.  The umbrella term "stranded" covers any and all of them.  Intarsia is another way of doing color work, but it does not involve stranding and is usually done flat.

I generally like to knit socks and sleeves using the magic loop method. This means on either side of my work there are two cables that are looped around as I knit across the sock that connect the back to the front, making a circle of stitches that is much smaller than the circumference of needle/cable I'm using.  I work across the front half of stitches, right to left, and then flip the work over, pull the needle out, reorient my stitches and cables so that I'm ready to knit the back stitches.

 (pictured: me working across one half of the stitches via magic loop, the other side of knitting looks identical)

In this way I can knit any circumference tube without having to have a cable that is exactly the length (or shorter) than the work. There are several other ways to knit smaller tubes (double pointed needles being one you might be familiar with) but my preference is the magic loop!

 Well, this poses a problem for stranded socks.  Stranding yarn causes floats on the inside of your work, floats that are caused by knitting with the other color and carrying the contrast color along. These floats generally need to be nice and loose to account for stretching over your heel and instep, and also to keep your fabric nice and even.  In the magic loop method, it's common that the floats that go between needles will be way too tight and cause issues, especially if you're floating across multiple stitches.  The inside of the socks face each other, which doesn't offer enough room for these floats.

Someone showed me how to fix that problem, and it's ingenious!  I simply put the sock inside out and rather than knit on the front needle facing me, I knit along the far side.  This way the floats are floating around the outside of the sock and aren't tugged as much going around the bend.

 

This technique is absolutely possible to do while using double pointed needles or two circular needles or however you prefer to knit socks and sleeves and you notice you have issues with your floats being long enough.

Currently I'm working on some stranded socks, but there's a touch of stranding at the beginning of the birkin sleeve where I implemented this technique.  When I was finished with the stranding section, I simply pushed the sleeve right side out and continued with the working needles in the front.

(I can also turn the sock right-side out for pictures!)

If you have any questions or comments about the technique, feel free to comment! 

Next time I plan to talk about a long-term work in progress that I haven't talked about on the blog yet. I do have one other languishing project that is hibernating at the moment, but you all have pretty much been introduced to all of my current knitting WIPs. woohoo!

 

patterns:

Birkin - Caitlin Hunter knit out of brooklyn tweed loft

Brigitte's Garden socks- Natalie Sheldon