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Have You Tried Helical Stripes?

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Helical knit armwarmersI have lately been showing off a lot of the gaps in my knitting knowledge, and here’s another one: I’ve never knit helical stripes.

This is a technique for knitting stripes in the round in which you basically move the end of the round around a bit by leaving some stitches unworked in one color when you change to the next color.

It sounds a little mind-blowing and like it might not actually work, but it does!

This is the first technique in the Mason-Dixon Knitting blog’s Year of Techniques, and it’s a great one to start with. Check out the tutorial, give it a whirl and let me know what you think.

The Year of Techniques is a series that will be going on all year, which includes technique videos and patterns that will help you learn those skills. The pattern for this month is a pair of armwarmers; you can buy the collection of patterns, to be released monthly, on Ravelry.

There are other helical patterns on Ravelry, but of course you could work any one-round stripe (or thicker, apparently, but it’s a technique mostly used on one-round stripes) pattern in this manner. I’m definitely going to check it out soon. I’d love to know if you’ve tried it.

[Photo via Mason-Dixon Knitting.]

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Comments

  1. I just watched this video, too, and found it interesting. I’ve never knit helical stripes. That said, I think they’d be useful for straight tubes, but I just can’t wrap my head around what to do for pieces with shaping. I’m not sure I could keep track of a moving start of round while also increasing for a thumb gusset…

Have you read?

Knit a Linen Stitch Hot Pad

Linen stitch is one of my favorite knitting stitch patterns that, every time I use it in a project, I think about how I don’t use it often enough. 

It’s an easy stitch to make, with slip stitches done with the yarn held to the front of the work on the right/front side and to the back on the wrong/back side, which makes the strand of yarn a visible part of the pattern. 

It also makes a fabric that is thick and looks kind of like a woven fabric.

I recently used linen stitch to make a double-thick pot holder, which I worked in a kind of interesting way. I didn’t want to have to do any sewing on the project, so I started it from a crochet cast on and picked up stitches from the side of the cast on to make the hot pad all in one piece in the round with the edge sealed. 

This requires working on two circular needles, which is another technique I don’t use that often and am always reminded how much I like it when I do. 

The combination of double thickness and the stitch pattern makes for a hot pad that’s already pretty thick, but I also added a bit of old towel to the inside before I closed up the end to make it super thick and extra protective for your surfaces. 

I found the engineering challenge of this construction method to be a lot of fun, but you could also just knit it as a tube (casting on twice as many stitches as I did) and sew up the ends by hand when the knitting is done. Either way you’ve got a useful and pretty addition to your kitchen, whether you work it in a solid color, stripes or as a stash busting project will all your cotton odd balls. 

You can grab the pattern over at Our Daily Craft, or check it out on Ravelry. 

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