Geek-A-Long, How to Knit
2022 Geek-A-Long Sock Academy: Stranded Color Work Basics
Feb
Hello Sock Mages! This week, let’s get a little bit wild, and flash our floats. I’m obsessed with looking at photos of floats on Instagram. Seriously, flash your floats and @ me because I want to see them. I dream of a day that I can curate a bottomless feed of nothing but the wrong side of color work knitting.
Once you get comfortable with reading colorwork charts —see this post for more on charts— the only thing standing between you and a fabulous color work sock that is beautiful inside and out is getting the hang of tensioning your floats. Floats are the strands of yarn running along the back of your work that are created by the “off color” (i.e. the one that wasn’t being knit with on that stitch). Floats are tricky because they have no inherent stretch. When you knit a stitch it’s got some built in stretch, but the float is literally just a strand of yarn, so it will only ever stretch it’s actual length. That means that you want your floats to be ever so slightly longer than the upstretched width of the stitches they run behind.
There are lots of ways of accomplishing that and 2 of the most popular are to work your sock inside out (this means that the floats face out and the knitting faces in) and/or to stretch the stitches on the needle out as the floats are worked so that when they are unstretched the float has a little extra slack behind them. I haven’t actually tried the inside out method, though it’s one of those things I always mean to try. That’s actually something I’m really trying to work on this year: I am a creature of knitting habit. Once I have a “go to” method for something I’m resistant to taking the time to try new methods. I’m determined to knit some socks on 9″ circular needles this year for that very reason! I’ve tried it several times but always give up after a few rounds. The needles feel comically small and my knitting is slowed. I realize academically if I would just give it a real try and get through a full sock I would no longer be slowed and might like it. So try new things with me! Maybe we can both learn to knit our socks inside out this year for nice even floats.
This week I’ve got a video for you that uses my usual method of stretching the stitches out to create the float-slack. In this one I’m covering how to join the second color (note that this is just how I personally like to do it, there’s really no wrong way to join your second color), and basic yarn management for short floats. Next week I’ll be right back here with a tutorial on managing longer floats (6+ stitches) and some unsolicited advice on holding your yarn. Big thanks again to Mr. David Cappuccino for taking on video editing for us so I can focus on knitting more things!
One last thing before I go: Some errata were found in the Shifter Sock pattern and they have now been corrected. Version 2.0 is available here on the blog, and on Ravelry.
~Megan-Anne
I don’t know about you, but I’m in the mood for a spoiler! Here’s a little sneak peek at a little of what you can expect from the 2022 GAL kits that will be available next month!
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I had a hard time with 9inch circs too. It didn’t help that the tips weren’t particularly pointy. But I switched to 10inch pointy circs and that made a big difference. (I got the knitter’s pride 10inch circular needle set for my birthday.)
I’m going to try those. I like knitting without having to readjust the needles.
nice! I’ll have to try those out!
When following someone’s pattern do you just add additional rows when adding the second color in order to do the knit one in each color?
PS: Your nails are awesome!
Thank you!!
You certainly can. I’ve done it when I thought it would look nice because I find it to be the easiest way to add the color, but you can also just go straight to whatever is in the pattern. I mentioned doing it in the video primarily so that if someone is trying the technique for the first time they can do that on a swatch.
Thanks!