It is not easy to manage two strands of yarn when we knit stranded colourwork, especially when we are beginners, or when we are new to Fair Isle and other types of stranded knitting.
For many years, I used an approach described as tip #2 over here. The idea is very simple – we always hold only one strand of yarn. The other one rests until it is time for us to knit with that colour again.
This method works great in all situations. No matter whether you are a beginner or a more skilled knitter, whether you hold yarn in your left hand or in your right one, drop the strand after you work a section in one colour, and pick up the other strand to knit a section in the other colour.
The only drawback of this approach is the speed. It takes time to drop a strand and pick up the other one.
Even though knitting is not a race, and there are lots of benefits we get from knitting slowly, it feels good to finish our projects sooner, as long as we do not sacrifice our mental health to knit faster.
How do we make stranded knitting more efficient?
This question bugged me a lot, until I came up with a type of stranded knitting that is not just the easiest way to work with two colours, but it also works beautifully with one of the most efficient ways to manage two strands of yarn.
This way to hold two strands works well no matter whether you hold yarn in your left hand (Continental knitting) or in your right hand (English knitting).
In this tutorial, we’ll see how we do it step by step in both cases.
Why does this way to hold yarn work so well with this type of stranded colourwork?
Because this type of stranded knitting (I call it Pixel Colourwork) is based on alternating one stitch in colour A with one stitch in colour B.
The distance between sections in different colours is never bigger than one stitch, and that means we never get too much yarn slack. No slack – no floppy strands falling off your fingers, and no messed-up knitting tension.
Pixel colourwork and this easy and effective way to hold two strands of yarn are a perfect pair of methods that form beautiful colourwork with almost no effort on our part.
To see how pixel colour patterns work, take a look at Pixel Socks. The pattern is over here.
Read the full step-by-step version of this tutorial:
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