Color knitting in the round forms a spiral. Therefore, the end of each round is 1 stitch above the beginning of that same round, forming an unattractive "jog."
When knitting is worked in CONTINUOUS stripes, there are two really nifty tricks to mitigate that jog:
- Jogless stripes, both stationary and traveling, for stripes of 3 or more rounds
- Helix stripes, for continuous 1 round high stripes, like a barber-pole
However, although both the jogless stripe trick and the helix stripe trick are nifty tricks that really work, they have their limitations. Specifically, where the colors are one round or more rounds high, but AREN'T CONTINUOUS, neither jogless nor helix will work.
The most common example of non-continuous stripes are one-stitch high stripes in different colors: Fair-Isle knitting is a subset of that category, since each motif is typically made up of single-stitch-high color changing rounds.
Traditionally in Fair Isle-type knitting, the color jog wasn't hidden, but was placed as far out of sight as possible: under the left arm. A different traditional treatment was to center the color change dab smack in the middle of the sweater front, and then cut the sweater (called "steeking") up the discontinuity. (For those unfamiliar, a steek is secured by sewing before cutting, then the front bands are put on either side of the cut afterwards.) Putting the color change at the steek separates the offset by the width of the front bands, making it indiscernible.
A third trick, not much known, is called "picture framing." By this trick, the patterns forming color-stripes are purposely kept apart by a few columns of either an added color, or a few background-colored stitches, as shown below.
Any Fair-Isle (or any other kind of colorwork) sweater can be adapted by picture-framing: you just add a few columns (stitches) to the pattern and always knit those stitches in the frame-color.
Here is a real life example of picture-framing on the side seam of a Fair-Isle inspired garment. This frame is quite a bit more complicated than the simple background-colored vertical stripe shown in the line drawings above, but follows from the same idea.
As for the how to, you can carry the yarn frame color along, up the columns by winding it into a small butterfly or bobbin and keep that hanging on-site (don't carry it around the round). When you get to the frame, draw the running yarn from the bobbin back to the starting point and knit the frame columns with it. The other colors are simply stranded behind the picture frame columns, every time you come to them. Alternatively, if the same colors are always used in the frame as in the main body of the work, as in the photo above, you can just knit the frame as part of the ordinary colorwork.
Obviously, if you make a very wide frame, this will make something of a welt (raised ridge) at the frame, because of the stranding yarn behind the columns of the frame. However, over a short span (2 or 3 or even 4 stitches) maintaining a loose tension will generally avoid the welting problem.
PS: In the comments, Beverly mentions a pair of socks she designed which feature picture framing separating patterned panels from one another. These socks are a good example of using simple background-color picture framing to avoid a pattern jog, go have a look.
Good knitting, TK
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