Category: Techniques

Explode into Color: How To Define Colorwork Knitting

Explode into Color: How To Define Colorwork Knitting

Posted on by Kayla

Have you ever tried knitting with multiple colors at one time? It can be confusing! Keeping the different colors from becoming a tangled mess takes practice and patience. What doesn’t help is that multiple terms can define colorwork knitting. Stranded knitting, Fair Isle, and intarsia are among popular vocabulary. How do you get better at a technique when you aren’t sure what to research?! I’ve done the groundwork for you. Below are some tips and definitions to help you spend less time in the knitters glossary and more time making progress on your project.

What in the Word

To learn more about recommended ways of working with multiple colors it is important to know how you define your colorwork knitting project. Stranded knitting, fair isle, and intarsia all have slight variations that make all the difference in a final project. Let’s break down each one to get a better understanding of what each technique does.

Work that Colorwork

Show me your colors! Pictures of sweaters covered in explosions of colors can create envy in the crafting world. What technique do these knitters use to create such stunning and colorful projects? Each of these projects is a variation on colorwork knitting: any knitting where two or more colors are in use at the same time. Pretty simple! Fair Isle, stranded knitting, and intarsia are all types of colorwork knitting. Typically, there are two or more colors on each row of knitting to be considered colorwork. With this definition, rows that are stripes of alternating colors don’t count here. That doesn’t mean stripes don’t have great uses, and they can be a great way to introduce variation into a project without adding too much complexity.

Colorwork knitted hat displaying Pac-Man and associated ghosts. Good example of ways to define colorwork knitting as the bottom band of blue ghosts on a white background and the center band of yellow Pac-Man and black background were done in stranded knitting and the top ban showing one blue and one orange ghost on a white background was done in intarsia.
The top of this hat was done in intarsia because each ghost was a separate color and there was no need to carry each color all the way around the hat. The center and bottom sections were done in stranded knitting where both colors in use were knitted or carried across the rows.

Stranded at the Drive In

Don’t despair like Danny from Grease, with a little practice you won’t be branded a fool in your colorwork projects. To start, the terms stranded knitting and Fair Isle are interchangeable. In this technique, multiple colors are in use within a single row of knitting. Usually the colors are present in a few stitches at a time, and the color not in use is carried along the backside of the knitting. This creates strands of yarn along the wrong side of the work.

One important thing to watch for is the tension of those strands across the back of the knitting. A tight tension causes the front of the project to pucker. Too loose of a tension and holes can form where the color change occurs. When executed correctly, these projects are doubly warm because the strands add an extra layer. The additional warmth is great for winter hats and mittens, like my Ladybug Mittens, which are a great introduction to stranded knitting.

Now Entering Intarsia

Another type of colorwork is intarsia. When I hear the word “intarsia” images of Narnia fill my imagination. Maybe that is because the technique invokes images of mysterious, challenging, beautiful works of art. Or maybe my mind wanders in odd ways. Intarsia involves working each block of color with a separate strand of yarn. For example, if a pattern has four sections, red, blue, white, and blue, use a separate strand of yarn for each section without carrying the yarn across the entire row or breaking off the yarn at each color change. This is a good technique for designs that do not cover the entire width of a project and for projects with large blocks of the same color. Projects like this take more patience and planning to keep all active colors untangled, but the end results can be stunning!

Example of intarsia knitting, a yellow square with a pink elephant in the middle. The pink elephant is centered and creates a separate block of color.
This elephant square was double knit, but shows an example of when intarsia would be used. The elephant doesn’t take up the entire width of the square, so the three sections, yellow side 1, pink elephant, and yellow side 2, would be knit with separate strands of yarn without carrying yarn across a section.

Conclusion

Now that you know more about how to define colorwork knitting, are you ready to cast on? A plethora of colors add dimension to any project. Colorwork of any variety is a fun skill to practice in your craft. Try out different techniques to find what works for you.

Oh Baby! What Baby Gift to Make?

Oh Baby! What Baby Gift to Make?

Posted on by Kayla

Choosing a knitting or crocheting project for babies can be an exciting and overwhelming struggle. What baby gift should you make? There are thousands of patterns aimed at babies and new parents. Some are quick and easy, others are all intensive projects, and all are labors of love.

I recently learned that a friend from college is expecting their first child. My first thought was, of course, what baby gift to make! Baby blankets, sweaters, softies, hats; there are so many choices! How do you choose what project to cast on for new babies?

Tick Tock Time Constraints

The first obstacle to tackle is time. How long do you have until the baby will arrive? Do you want the gift to be ready for a newborn, or wait until the child is a few months old? Crafting takes time, and it is stressful when done under a time crunch. Knitting and crocheting should be enjoyable! If time is not on your side, choose a smaller project like a softie or an easy sweater.

Baby blanket shown blocking in the grass. The blanket is yellow with pink animals inside small squares.
Blanket made as a baby gift for a friend.

By far the most time intensive project I have ever done was this baby blanket for an animal loving friend. It was double knit and had different animal patterns. There seemed to be miles of yarn involved, and many, many months of knitting!

I have also made several baby sweaters for various little ones in my life. You can read more about the sweaters I have done in my blog post Goldilocks and the Many Sweaters and see how I tried blocking baby sweaters in Lessons in Sweater Blocking.

Practicality, Please!

The next question to answer is how practical do you want your present to be for new parents? A gorgeous cabled sweater is a lovely item, but if the baby is born in June a warm sweater will not be very useful. Babies grow like weeds! A sweater that fits today will be too small in a few months. Softies and stuffed animals are always adorable, but most babies don’t interact with them until they are at least a few months old. This doesn’t mean that cute crochet bunnies aren’t a great gift! Emma the Bunny from Edward’s Menagerie is one of my favorite softies and would make a great gift! Just keep in mind the intended recipient and think about how the parents might receive different types of gifts.

If you are interested in reading more about Edward’s Menagerie you can read my book review. I just did another character out of the book, Angharad the Donkey, for a friend whose school mascot was a donkey.

A donkey made in school colors for a friend from college and their new baby.

Baby Yarn for Baby Gifts

Once you have a pattern picked out, the next step is choosing the right yarn. Babies can have sensitive skin, so choosing a yarn that is soft and intended for a young audience is a great idea. I enjoy using Bernal Baby Yarn and Baby Bee. Texture of the yarn is important, make sure to choose the right type for your project! That fluffy cloud like yarn makes cozy winter baby blankets, but is not ideal for light Lacey sweaters. When choosing a knitting or crocheting project for a baby, try to pick a yarn that is machine washable. New parents will appreciate this! Yarn that requires special care and blocking does not meet the busy schedule requirements of new parents.

You should be ready to create the perfect gift for the new baby in your life! choosing a knitting or crocheting project for a baby can be difficult, but some forethought can save a lot of headache down the road. Baby gifts are so much fun to make! Do you have a favorite project for new babies?

Seaming a Baby Sweater: Not as Scary as it Seems

Seaming a Baby Sweater: Not as Scary as it Seems

Posted on by Kayla

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Everyone knows that after blocking a baby sweater, the inevitable next step is seaming the baby sweater. Let me start by saying that I love to knit. I do not love to block and seam edges and weave in ends. It is all part of the process, but seaming a freshly cast off sweater is not on my list of tasks to complete quickly. After procrastinating for about 2 weeks after the sweater came off the blocking wires I finally picked the project up again.

My hesitation probably comes from the fact that I am not great at sewing or seaming my knitting together. I can join two pieces of knitting, but it looks crude and unruly. They say practice makes perfect, but it’s discouraging to knit a fantastic piece and ruin it with 28 different attempts to sew it together. Sound familiar to anyone?

Method for Seaming

Typically I avoid seams by working projects in the round whenever possible. With a little math I could have figured out how to make this sweater in the round, but I was lazy and wanted to start casting on, not doing calculations to convert from rows to rounds. I did plan ahead (a little anyway) and I cast on two extra stitches on all the pieces for the sweater. That left one selvedge stitch on each side of the pieces to use to sew the edges together. I chose a slip stitch selvedge stitch, sometimes known as the chain or twisted chain selvedge stitch. Turns out this isn’t a common one for seaming because it tends to leave a loose and unflattering seam. So much for my initial research.

Example of edges of pieces. Visually similar to a crochet chain stitch all along the edges.
All the edges of the pieces looked similar to a crochet chain stitch.

After more research I found a great technique for seaming up my baby sweater, and it looks almost invisible! Here is a link to the tutorial that I found created by 10 Rows a Day. It is a fantastic tutorial with written instructions, pictures, and even a video. In the end, seaming the edges of a knitted sweater was less scary than I imagined!

The Baby Sweater is Seamed and Finished!

Enough talk, here are the results from seaming the baby sweater! I am happy with how they turned out. The seams lay flat and don’t draw attention away from the rest of the sweater. It was easy to work the sewing along the underarms and down the side of the body.

Close up of underarm and side seam of baby sweater.
Seams! The side and underarm seam along the sweater lays flat and looks pretty innocuous.

The final finished baby sweater turned out absolutely darling! It is on the small side (although the sleeves might be a tad long) so it probably won’t fit the intended recipient. I enjoyed working the pattern, Originally it started off as the Small Cable Cardigan from Lullaby Knits, by Vibe Ulrik Sondergaard. I decided at the end to finish it like the Small Cable Sweater from the same book. You can use this link to purchase a copy of the book Lullaby Knits.

Completed baby sweater laying on grass and pine needles.
Completed Small Cable Sweater!

I just cast off a purple cabled sweater in a larger size, so growing baby will get a sweater yet! I think my next attempt at seaming a baby sweater will go even better than this time around.