Thursday 11 February 2016

Vertical Stranding

The most amazing thing about knitting is that there is always something else to learn. And I learned a new technique on Tuesday that is terrific: Vertical Stranding by Lorilee Beltman . I'm making the Unchained socks.
 Doing intarsia while working round and round has always been difficult but carrying these lines of one stitch down the sock is a breeze. Really, it's easy. There are a couple of tricks, of course.

Once you have knit the first stitch of each of the 4 lines of colour you need to make a butterfly of the 4 yarns and then shove it down the middle of the sock. That's two tricks. I wouldn't have thought of pushing it down the centre of my sock but it helps a lot to do this.
Then when you come to the spot where you're going to pick up the colour, place your main colour off to the Left, knit one stitch with the colour, drop it and continue on. The main colour always gets placed off to the Left when you knit the new colour. Do this and it all works. Keeping the yarn to the left means that continental knitters have an advantage since our yarn is always attached to our left hand. If you are a "thrower" you have to do a little more manipulation.
And the inside is so neat. A wonderful technique.

From the comments: Thanks t_a. I've been doing lots and lots of knitting lately. Nice to get some socks as a result.
-Deb
Books and Patterns on Ravelry;  Books and Patterns on Patternfish.com.  For Printed copies of books email: cabinfever.ca@gmail.com. Thanks.

4 comments:

  1. Hey. That's cool. Must give it a go when I feel adventurous. I really like the line of color in the dark, plain sock!!

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  2. Pretty cool ;-)

    I have never been able to do socks ... but this might work with sweaters too :-D

    ~Val

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    1. Yes, you could do this with any project. It is pretty cool.

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