How to do Vertical Stripes in your Knitting
More on adding color and be well on your way to Intarsia. Some of you may be more adventurous than me, but when I attempted this for the first time, I had huge loose holes in between the colors, and no matter how tight I pulled I just couldn’t get it right. I then tried again and made a wonderful 3 –D effect, which was not what I was aiming for at all. The key to working with colors is learning to maintain you tension, and making sure to “twist” your yarns before using the next color. Remember the rule that I told you about in the Horizontal Stripes, it applies to the vertical stripes also. Do not carry your yarn across more than 4 stitches, if you want to make wider stripes, you will need to wind yarn around bobbins. You can either purchase bobbins , use cardboard, or just make a butterfly (wrap yarn in a figure 8 around your thumb and index finger). Once you have completed the first row, your bobbins (if you are using them) will just hang on the back of your work. Let’s get started.
With mc CO 20 Knit Row: Knit 3 stitches, add cc (see adding color)knit 2 stitches, *drop the cc, pull the mc UNDER the cc, knit 2 stitches, drop the mc, pull the cc OVER the mc, knit 2 stitches *,repeat from * to * until you have 3 stitches left, drop the cc, pull the mc UNDER the cc, knit remaining 3 stitches. Purl Row: with mc purl 3 stitches, drop mc, pull cc UNDER mc, knit 2 stitches,* drop cc, pull mc OVER cc, knit 2 stitches, pull cc UNDER mc, knit 2 stitches.* repeat from * to * until you have 3 stitches left, drop the cc, pull mc over cc, knit remaining 3 stitches. Repeat the above two rows for pattern. Please note you will only have to tie in your new color on your beginning row, you won’t have to tie anymore unless you run out of yarn. This may take a bit of practice, don’t get discouraged if you end up with loose stitches or gaps between the color changes. The more you do it , the better you will get at it so cast on and keep at it.
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