ALL ABOUT FLOATS, PART ONE

I'm beginning a multi-part series about floats in stranded color knitting. I've discussed them before HERE but apparently I have more to say. A lot more! I'm going to show you four ways to deal with floats and you'll be able to see how the front and the back of the work looks.

Floats happen when you knit with two colors. If you knit three stitches in a row in one color, you'll have a float (or strand) across the back of your work in the other color three stitches long. A float is considered long when it is about an inch or so long, about  5-7 sts long depending on yarn weight.

Today I want to talk about how you can determine if a pattern has long floats. Time and time again I see beginners choose patterns with really long floats without knowing what they are getting into. Basically short, geometric patterns have short floats and patterns with asymmetrical larger patterns such as animals or robots often have larger floats.

These Bunnies and Carrots Hats have really long 15-20 st long floats between the bunny's ears.

No long floats in this rainbow mitten design I abandoned.

A really popular pattern during the Olympics was this cute reindeer hat. It has long floats between each reindeer and the original pattern used high contrast colors - white and dark blue - for the design. What this means is that if the floats were woven, the dark color could possibly show through to the front of the work. The Ravelry project photos for the hat are interesting to read - some knitters used intarsia in the round or duplicate stitch for the reindeer to avoid the long floats.


Traditional Fair Isle designs from the Shetland Isles pride themselves on not using floats longer than five stitches. Scandinavian designs do use longer floats but some savvy designers use single stitches or small designs in more complex motifs to help break up long floats. In the famous Dale of Norway polar bear sweater by Mette Handberg, check out the geometric patterning inside the polar bear. That was done to keep the floats from being excessively long.

I always consider the length of the floats when deciding on a pattern. A few long floats here and there won't deter me but if I see a pattern with many long floats I know it will take me longer to knit (whatever method you use for floats can interrupt the flow of your color knitting) and could possibly cause tension problems. Of course, long floats can also give you a spectacular looking hand knit so they are often worth the trouble.

Here are a few stranded patterns from my Ravelry queue. 

Long floats -  Nightingale Socks, Running Horse Hat (section of horses), Dancing Stars Hat

Short floats -  La Gran Fair Isle Pillow, Quo Vadis Mittens, October Fair Isle Pillow