Stranding - Color work with woven inside

When knitting with more than one color there are different techniques how to make the inside look more or less nice. Stranding and intarsia are the most known. Fair Isle is a special method within stranding and the term sometimes seems to be used for all stranding work.

When I work with 2 or 3 colors in stranding, I weave in the yarn that I carry on the inside. One example you see here:

http://hyperactiveknitting.blogspot.com/2010/09/neckwarmer-drops-116-10.html

And another one here:

http://hyperactiveknitting.blogspot.com/2010/09/spongebob-pullover.html

The advantages are:
- a better look of the inside
- a better feel of the fabric
- a more equal thickness of the fabric (makes gloves or mittens or socks feel less like they are warm only in some spots)
- less chance to get stuck (especially important for garment, not so much for stuffed animals). Fingers (e.g. on gloves and sleeves) and toes get stuck on long loopy sections for adults and kids and especially for babies. Buttons on shirts have a tendency to get cought up in the strands, as well.

So, how do you do it?
There are multiple ways of handling this problem so I made 2 videos of how I handle it:

The knit stitch (RS):

on youtube:

Stranded Knitting - Knit

The purl stitch (WS):

on youtube:

Stranded Knitting - Purl



If you think that that was too fast... here is the ultra slow-motion version of my knitting (knit and purl side):

The main color is white, the contrast color is dark gray.  I am just knitting a sample with chess board pattern here and the video is made with actual slow-motion technique. I hope you can see how the weaving is done.


I hold the main color regularly on my index finger and the contrast color on the same finger but towards the front. When working the stitches I take the working yarn once over and once under the other yarn. To make that happen I do seperate the yarns with my fingers (without dropping my yarnholding). I mainly use my right index finger to slide in between the yarns and pulling one over or one under as needed. But I use other fingers, as well. It is much easier to see than to read. So here is the video without text, but 3.5 times slower than real life - and I did work slowly. I also took a colored background to make both colors very visible.


Stranded Knitting - Slow-Mo

If you are able to knit both Continental Style and English Style there is a really neat instruction at Philosopher's wool but since I can not do English Style so I stick with my method.

Philosopher's Wool


For those, who knit English style there is a video to achieve the same effect:

English Style

A video for the 2-handed method with German text I found here:
http://strickpraxis.wordpress.com/2008/04/27/141/?



For any questions please ask here or on youtube or send me an e-mail.