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.]
What happens if you use a yarn ring and thus both yarns are held by the left hand while knitting continential?
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.