Ah, color

A bit of an explanation: My general mode of operation is to become totally obsessed about something (project, technique, craft, etc.) and work on it exclusively for a period of time. After that, it tends to get put away for weeks or months until I rediscover it and go into a frenzy all over again.

Having said that, perhaps it will explain my recent fascination with color and stranded colorwork. Most of the things in the post are related to it in some way. You have been warned.

I spent some more time on James' music mitts and reached a part of the pattern that has long stretches of a single color. This leaves the second color being carried in the background with a super long float that is hard to tension correctly (especially on double pointed needles that have corners to turn). I figured I'd try 'catching' or 'wrapping' the float with the other color so it wasn't as long. Being rather oblivious, I didn't bother to look up the proper technique. Boy, what a dork!

As you might have guessed, I was doing it completely wrong. I was trying to 'catch' the yarn by twisting the balls of yarn and pulling that twist up to the needles. Yikes! (This video has a good intro, wraps are at minute 2. This one was where it really clicked.).



I don't know if the photos really show it, but these have some wild variations in tension. They're also too small for James. Sigh. That combined with wrongly wrapped floats means I need to rip them out and start over. They're cool enough that I want to get them right!

Towards that goal, I started a practice piece. I took the first couple patterns easy, with only two stitch floats. Then I branched out and tried a pattern from Alice Starmore's Book of Fair Isle Knitting. (Ignore the extra needles-- they were just to help keep it flat for the picture.)



Ah, much better! I thought that I had twisted the cast on for this, so right before I joined them, I twisted it one rotation. Turns out I had it right the first time, so I ended up with a twisted cast on anyway. Well, it's just a practice piece, so I snipped it a couple rows in and straightened it out.

I was feeling pretty confident at this point, so I got a wild and crazy hair and decide two colors weren't enough. A trip to the yarn store and some fiddling later and I had this:


Um, yeah. Maybe I should just stick with self-striping yarn for awhile.


Or maybe I just need some more transition colors. More yarn, yum!