I grew up in New York City--Manhattan. Sometimes into our urban space, obviously alien people would arrive. Their main distinction to me and the other little kids on my block was twofold: 1) they drove big cars; 2) they provided excellent free street theater when they tried to parallel park.
These aliens (or "suburbanites" as I would later call them when I became one) were understood to be harmless. They smiled at people, held doors and were generally considered nice. We sort of liked them, but we could not understand their priorities. They would say "New York is a nice place to visit, but we wouldn't want to live here."
We compared these aliens with our native drivers--who could (and routinely did) cram their cars into very small spaces with only a casual backwards glance, while maybe eating a sandwich, or having a shouting match with the guy they'd just jumped to claim the space. The aliens clearly lost in this comparison. Our attitude was "New York is OK to live in, but we wouldn't want to have to be visitors--"
Visiting the land of two-color knitting is like that. Dabbling at two color knitting is like trying to parallel park if you don't have a system--a tentative forward motion, a hesitant backwards move, dropping one color to knit a few stitches with the next color, then dropping again. Do you cut the wheel this way or that? Should the yarns should be twisted together? Do you line up with the bumper or the steering wheel? Should the new yarn be taken over or under the old yarn? Without a system, the whole thing can turn into a nightmare.
So--what factor distinguishes the driver carefully maneuvering into a space with assistance of a spouse at curbside from the driver blithely cruising backwards with only one hand on the wheel and one eye on the mirror? It is nothing but practice, practice, and more practice until it turns into a system. It's no secret how to parallel park--it's laid out right there on page 43 of the Driver's License Handbook. But, until you do it over and over, until you reduce it to a step-by-step procedure, you won't "get it."
Two-color knitting (heck--all knitting), like parallel parking, is going to stay in the realm of diagrams and theory--unless you get out there and make it your own.
Ahem--just a minute while I climb down off this soapbox now.
OK, back to the subject at hand...
A classic method of two-color knitting is the "two-fisted" approach popularized by Elizabeth Zimmerman. The idea is to knit one color off the left hand (continental knitting) and the other color off the right hand (English knitting). Keeping the yarns on separate hands means the yarns are kept apart, and so have less tendency to tangle.
*BEFORE YOU START your two color project--train your other hand in the unfamiliar technique. There are instructions for English and continental knitting here and here. Practice on something small, flat and gaugeless--something where tension is immaterial. A washcloth is good, a potholder better. Make the potholder out of wool, then felt all your tension errors away. As per the next point, there is no need to purl. You can make this object in garter stitch--knit every row.
These aliens (or "suburbanites" as I would later call them when I became one) were understood to be harmless. They smiled at people, held doors and were generally considered nice. We sort of liked them, but we could not understand their priorities. They would say "New York is a nice place to visit, but we wouldn't want to live here."
We compared these aliens with our native drivers--who could (and routinely did) cram their cars into very small spaces with only a casual backwards glance, while maybe eating a sandwich, or having a shouting match with the guy they'd just jumped to claim the space. The aliens clearly lost in this comparison. Our attitude was "New York is OK to live in, but we wouldn't want to have to be visitors--"
Visiting the land of two-color knitting is like that. Dabbling at two color knitting is like trying to parallel park if you don't have a system--a tentative forward motion, a hesitant backwards move, dropping one color to knit a few stitches with the next color, then dropping again. Do you cut the wheel this way or that? Should the yarns should be twisted together? Do you line up with the bumper or the steering wheel? Should the new yarn be taken over or under the old yarn? Without a system, the whole thing can turn into a nightmare.
So--what factor distinguishes the driver carefully maneuvering into a space with assistance of a spouse at curbside from the driver blithely cruising backwards with only one hand on the wheel and one eye on the mirror? It is nothing but practice, practice, and more practice until it turns into a system. It's no secret how to parallel park--it's laid out right there on page 43 of the Driver's License Handbook. But, until you do it over and over, until you reduce it to a step-by-step procedure, you won't "get it."
Two-color knitting (heck--all knitting), like parallel parking, is going to stay in the realm of diagrams and theory--unless you get out there and make it your own.Ahem--just a minute while I climb down off this soapbox now.
OK, back to the subject at hand...
KNITTING with ONE COLOR in EACH HAND
A classic method of two-color knitting is the "two-fisted" approach popularized by Elizabeth Zimmerman. The idea is to knit one color off the left hand (continental knitting) and the other color off the right hand (English knitting). Keeping the yarns on separate hands means the yarns are kept apart, and so have less tendency to tangle.
click picture
This is incredibly awkward at first-- the needles won't cooperate, and you'll be slightly bald from tearing your hair. But, like everything else in knitting, if you persevere, you will succeed.
click picture
Some tricks to make it easier:*BEFORE YOU START your two color project--train your other hand in the unfamiliar technique. There are instructions for English and continental knitting here and here. Practice on something small, flat and gaugeless--something where tension is immaterial. A washcloth is good, a potholder better. Make the potholder out of wool, then felt all your tension errors away. As per the next point, there is no need to purl. You can make this object in garter stitch--knit every row.
*WORK the two-color project WITH CIRCULAR NEEDLES around and around on the face of a large-ish TUBE--IMHO, a hat (20 or 22") should be the minimum size for a first project.
- If you try color knitting back-and-forth, you're going to have to purl in two colors on every other row. This is not impossible, but it is more difficult that knitting in 2 colors--so leave 2-color purling until you've mastered the tension thing.
- If you try 2-color knitting on a small tube with dpn's, you'll not only have to watch the tension issue between your own two hands, you'll also have the additional issue of carrying floats across a right angle bend where the dpn's meet. A float will want to cut the shortest line--straight across this corner, making it much shorter than a float stretched out flat. A too-short float = puckers. Bottom line: leave the two-color socks until you have mastered float tension on a flattish piece of knitting.
Consistency also makes it possible to analyse your work--if one color is always looser, you'll know which hand ought to be knitting tighter. If you switch colors randomly, you'll really have no idea how to improve.
*USE WHICHEVER METHOD YOU'RE BETTER AT (continental or English) for whichever color there is the most of--this will give you the best overall tension. Use the unfamiliar hand to work the contrasting yarn. It is for this reason that the first post in this series recommended choosing a beginning pattern with one clearly dominant main color, and only a relatively small amount of the contrasting color.
To explain further: if most of the pattern is made of the main color, and that color is laid down the way you usually knit, you'll have a better chance of getting a good two-color result right away. If you've chosen your color pattern to keep the number of contrasting color stitches to a minimum, then even if your unfamiliar hand lays down the contrasting color with poor tension control, there won't be that much contrasting color to plague you. As stated previously, if you have to err, err on the side of TOO LOOSE. Then, if you have to, you can always go back and tighten those relatively few contrast color stitches, float by float and still obtain a wearable garment.
*DON'T WORRY ABOUT TWISTING THE YARNS TOGETHER--they will twist themselves all that is necessary if you are consistent about which yarn you hold in which hand. Further, it is only when you are trying to float a yarn across more than 5-6 stitches that you have to worry about pinning down that float somewhere along its too-long run. Since you're going to be smart, and use a short float, there's no reason to ever actually twist anything at all... (but if anyone out there is just burning to make bunnies, or chickies, or some other pattern with a wildly long float, and is going to totally disregard all advice about short floats, and NEEDS to know just how to twist yarns over a very long float, stay tuned as this series continues...)
Next post: How to knit with two colors off one hand (continental) and how to knit in three colors.
--TECHknitter You have been reading TECHknitting on: Two-color knitting, with one color in each hand. (Stranded knitting).