As [promised yesterday]({% post_url 2013-03-20-knitting-pattern-chipps %}), this is a tutorial for how to carry up yarn when knitting stripes in the round.
This is a handy little trick I figured out when I was desperately trying to figure out how to avoid weaving in dozens of ends at the end of striped projects that are knit in the round, which are some of my favorite projects to knit. Now, maybe somewhere there exists this exact same tutorial, but I haven’t actually seen it before and I think it’s a super easy and useful trick that should be more widespread.
After a little trial and error of wrapping things different ways, and finding that wrapping it one way did not work (the yarn will show through to the front side and the back side will be too inelastic) I finally figured out that when I was wrapping it counter clockwise, it was working like a charm. The yarn is carried up in a tidy line on the wrong side (which looks kind of like a seam), still has a little bit of spring to it because of how it is wrapped, and does not show through to the front!
Can you see where the wraps are?
I prefer doing it this way over weaving in ends not only because it saves time, but because then I don’t have a bunch of little tail ends popping out of the knitting all the time. Everything is held in a nice tidy line.
Now, this is incredibly easy to do. But it’s also easy to do the wrong way, so that’s why I am going to give you some pictures and talk it to death. Once you’ve got it, you’ll be a natural.
The first thing to note when you utilize this technique is that you’ll be working with two balls of yarn the whole time, and it’s easy for them to become tangled so try your best to keep them tidy and separate while knitting.
This is what you do.
When it comes time to change colors, take the ball of yarn you are knitting with and wrap it counter clockwise one time around the yarn you are carrying up.
wrap it counter clockwise
That is literally all there is to the trick.
And then knit with the working yarn for a few stitches, pulling the carried yarn to the right and out of the way.
Give the carried yarn a little tug, but don’t pull it tight. You’re looking for it to be snug to the back but not creating a pucker.
And then you repeat this as you knit the stripe with the working yarn, wrapping it around the carried yarn every few rows! That’s it!
You don’t want to do this every single row because it will create too much twisting in the back. You want to aim for about every other row to every third row. There is really no need to be a perfectionist when it comes to counting, if you forget for a few rows just go head and wrap it on the next one… I wouldn’t go a whole inch or anything, but just do it when you think about it.
It IS important to wrap whenever you are starting a new color because it locks the stitches together and keeps a gap from forming.
After a few rows it will look like this:
The reason why this works, and there reason the yarn needs to be wrapped counter clockwise is because the working yarn creates a nice little wrap around the carried yarn (which hides it from showing in the front), and it creates a nice little twist which adds enough extra yarn to the “seam” to give it some spring and keep it from being a tight, inelastic piece of yarn. If you were to wrap it the wrong way, that is to say clockwise, what happens is that the carried yarn is just encased straight in a ladder between two stitches, which means it shows in the front and has no elasticity. So remember: counter clockwise wraps. Got it? Got it. Great! Here is [Chipps]({% post_url 2013-03-20-knitting-pattern-chipps %}) with it carried from beginning to end:
This means I only had four ends to weave in for this entire sock. FOUR. You can even see where the heel was worked and the carry yarn was held until the short rows came back over to pick it back up again. It’s fantastic!
(You can also see on the first yellow stripe from the toe where I experimented with wrapping every row, which was unnecessary and didn’t, in my opinion, work as well. )
To sum it all up for quick reference:
Super simple.
Now you may want to [learn how to sew elastic into sock cuffs]({% post_url 2013-03-22-knitting-tutorial-sew-elastic %})!
Good luck and Happy Knitting!