15th December- Invisible Stranding

I do love a bit of colourwork (it's only fair isle if it uses certain specific motifs native to the Shetland Islands, notably Fair Isle (yes, it is an actual island). It works wonderfully in handspun because it stretches handspun yarn further and you can use leftover skeins as the accent colour in other projects. 

So when Dawn at my Wednesday night spinning group showed me a new pattern she'd found, and raved about I was slightly sceptical. One of the issues people often have with stranded colourwork is keeping their floats loose enough.  The pattern that Dawn found was an unvented solution to this issue, particularly when the floats run over long spreads of stitches. It's called "It's Not About the Hat" and the pattern is basically a tutorial for a technique of securing long floats, and reducing puckering.

If you enoy geeky solutions to knitting quirks, and a real discussion about how things work, their pro's, con's and alternative methods then head over to the TECHknitter blog. She has a few alternative methods of securing longer floats, and not just by twisting them, which is what producs the effect on the right hand hat in smooth, high contrasting yarns. I love this blog, I could read it for hours, so many smart solutions.

This post is part of my advent calendar 2016. Every day in December we're saying so long to 2016 by embracing learning, knowledge and creativity. Each day there will be a new post with a new skill or craft. You can read all the past posts here.