Stripes, Stripes, Everywhere!

I enjoy the look of stripes. I recently saw a lace shawl pattern on Ravelry with some stripes in it. My first thought was, "that's just lovely". Then I thought about how annoying weaving in the ends can be, and with lace weight yarn I'm not sure I could handle it!

Unfortunately, my lovely afghan is made from five different colors. That translates to a lot of weaving in of ends. It took me 15 squares on this afghan to realize that I could greatly reduce the amount of weaving I needed to do before seaming if I simply took some time to catch the ends on the wrong side of my work! A silly thing not to have thought of before considering all the two-color-work knitting I have done. 

Let me show you what I mean...

First I have found that the simplest way to join a new piece of yarn is to hold the tail ends together in my right hand (I just close my pinkie and ring fingers on those tails) and carefully knit the first stitch in the new color. 

I then move the tails to hold them in my left hand. With practice I found that my index and middle fingers could do this job very nicely, but early on I found my middle finger and thumb worked well (or when the yarn tail got short).

Holding the yarn tails firmly, I reach my right hand needle behind the yarn tails then grab the working yarn to pull through the next stitch.

The second stitch in this two stitch series is very simple. You could think about going in front of the yarn tails, but really, you're just grabbing the working yarn to make the next stitch as naturally as you would if you were just plain ole knitting. 

I repeat these two "stitches" until there is little to no yarn tail left. Sometimes I pull it tightly, other times I don't. I have found that after about 6 of these "stitch" pairs the tails aren't going anywhere and are nicely out of my way. 

If you are feeling particularly generous, feel free to contact me to learn more about how you can donate* to the Rose Stewart Designs Day at the Spa to promote aesthetically pleasing close up photographs of my hands in these demonstrations. 

*Donations are not tax-deducible.