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Dealing with Color Dominance in Colorwork Knitting

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I will admit than when I am working with more than one color in a row or round, I don’t always pay a lot of attention to which yarn is dominant. I work colorwork holding one yarn in each hand, and while I know enough to keep holding the same color in each hand throughout a project, I can never remember which one is supposed to “pop” based on which hand you are working it with.

This great blog post on color dominance in knitting from Jessica McDonald Designs reassures me that I was probably doing it “right” (bearing in mind there’s not really a right or wrong in knitting, just what you like and what you don’t like) all along without paying much attention.

As she explains in much more details in the post, the yarn that’s to the left will be more dominant in the knit fabric, because the floats from the yarn on the right will push it forward as you knit.

Because I tend to be an English knitter (holding the yarn in my right hand) I naturally put the contrast yarn in my right hand when I knit.

If you don’t know how to knit holding one strand in each hand (or you’re working with more than two colors) Jessica explains how to work with yarns in different ways to ensure the contrasting color of your choice is more dominant.

It’s certainly not the end of the world if you knit a different way, but you might be surprised by how different a project can look just by working with the yarns configured a different way as in the swatch above. You can clearly see a difference between the top and bottom of the swatch, and all she did differently was a switch on which yarn she was holding in which hand.

Head to the blog post to learn more about color dominance, and have fun learning more about easy ways to change the look of your project.

[Photo: Jessica McDonald Designs.]

 

Comments

  2. Whichever one is farthest to the left will be most dominant, which would be the one at the bottom of the ring if the loops are on the same side, or the one on the left side of the finger if they are on both sides.

Have you read?

Knit a Log Cabin Blanket with All Your Scraps

I guess I must have had this pattern on my mind, because I had chosen this log cabin blanket recipe to write about, promptly forgot about it and a couple of weeks later started knitting a log cabin blanket using all my pink yarn. 

It might stay pink if it makes it to baby blanket sized, or I might add in some pastel green and blue, too, to make a bigger blanket. We’ll see. I’m also holding several strands of yarn together to make a kind of bulky yarn, which means it’s deeply satisfying how much yarn is used even as the project is still relatively small. 

In Kristen Finlay’s version, DK weight yarn scraps (or fingering/sock yarn held double) are used to make a simple scrappy log cabin blanket that’s lighter weight than my version. Log cabin is a great technique for knitters of any skill level because it’s worked in garter stitch. The only not completely basic technique you need for log cabin knitting is picking up stitches. 

If you’ve never worked a log cabin knitting project before, this is a good introduction, and it is really nice to use all your yarn scraps in one big project you’ll use for years to come. 

If you use a lot of DK weight yarn you can keep building on it whenever you finish a project, or if you use more worsted weight you can do the same thing with it, it will just be a little bigger starting out than the pattern calls for. How big it gets is totally up to you. 

I have really been enjoying working on my log cabin project, and it’s my current sitting at my desk and need a break knit (do you have one of those or is it just me?). 

Ready to start your own log cabin blanket knitting project? You can grab the free pattern from Kristen Finlay on Ravelry. 

Need more log cabin inspiration? Check out more log cabin knitting patterns. 

[Photo: Kristen Finlay]