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How to Hold Yarn When Stranded Knitting

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how to hold yarn for stranded knittingStranded knitting, or Fair Isle knitting, is a fun way to get more color into your knitting projects. But I know it can be a little intimidating to figure out how to deal with the yarn.

Because you have to work with two different colors on each row or round, yarn management is different from when you only have one strand of yarn to deal with.

You might be tempted just to knit with the first color, drop it, pick up the next color yarn, work with it until you need to change colors, drop it, pick up the other yarn and so on.

But as long as it took me to describe that, it takes even longer to do.

There are other options:

  • hold both yarns at the same time in your right hand
  • hold both yarns at the same time in your left hand
  • hold one yarn in your right hand and one in your left hand

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RV7ksRfUoek&w=600&h=480]

This video gives you a run down of all the options. I hope you’ll try them and figure out which one works best for you.

How do you hold the yarn when you do stranded knitting? I’d love to hear about it!

Comments

  1. I am self taught, and I do it the clunky put-it-down-pick-it-up way. I will give the video a view and see if I can wrap my head around another way to manage the yarn. Perhaps I could get over my dread of multi color work that way!

  2. Oh I hope you do try! It’s really awkward in the beginning but with a little practice you can probably find a method that works better for you.

  3. I’m the same way as Amy, above — I was self-taught when it comes to Fair-Isle, and I still drop one yarn and pick up another. I’ve tried holding both yarns in my right hand, which doesn’t seem to stick. But I’m taking a look through the video right now, and maybe I’ll see something that does stick!

    Thank you for posting this! It’s very timely for me, since I’m working on a huge colourwork project. 🙂

  5. It seems to be, actually. I’ve found that provided I’m paying attention, I can tension both yarns in my Right Hand, one around the index finger and one around the middle finger, and the video gives me a good idea of how to work with the yarns that way, which was my previous stumbling block.

    The problem, is, then I start knitting with muscle memory, stop paying attention, and end up dropping the yarns again!

    I’ve seen knitting thimbles to hold yarns for colourwork. I might give one of those a try. 🙂

Have you read?

Book Review: The Knitter’s Sweater Fitting Bible

It’s one thing to follow a knitting pattern and get the fit that the designer wanted for that particular project. But it’s quite another thing to decide how you want your sweater to fit and making a project work for you. 

Designer Kim McBrien Evans aims to help knitters understand why sweater patterns don’t always work for them the way they expect and what to do about it in her book The Knitter’s Sweater Fitting Bible.

She describes the book as containing “everything I’ve learned about sweaters, bodies, and the art of fit.” It covers how to plan for a good fit through things like taking measurements and choosing the correct size to knit, understanding ease, reading schematics and fixing fit issues. 

Sweater style templates give knitters a place to start knitting better sweaters with made to measure patterns that work with any body, any yarn and any gauge. The book is designed to give knitters confidence to go their own way whether they’re modifying existing patterns, using one of the templates or designing their own custom sweater.

McBrien Evans argues that the best way to make a sweater that will fit well and stand up to lots of wearing is to work from the top down flat in pieces that are seamed when the knitting is done (the exception being circular yoke sweaters, which are worked in the round from the top down). She offers advice for making seaming easier like using selvedges and short rows.

She goes into a lot of detail on how and where to measure yourself and how to understand schematics in knitting patterns to help you choose the correct size for you and know where to adjust. The fixing fit chapter covers how to fit a sweater to your body from the shoulders down, with tips for things like balancing uneven shoulder height, accommodating a larger bust, using different shaping on the front and back of a sweater for better fit, fixing neckline depth and fixing sleeve and body lengths. 

The book includes photos and drawings of people of different sizes and with physical differences such as a smaller limb or having a mastectomy on one side, which is nice and helps you see how these concepts work on different bodies. 

The sweater templates offer options like a straight body, A-line and waist shaping body; set in sleeve caps and armholes, straight raglans and modular compound raglans, drop shoulders and circular yoke shaping; crew, scoop and V-neck options; a variety of sleeve templates, neckline finishes, and button hole options for cardigans. 

It’s easy for all this to feel overwhelming if you’re trying to read the book cover to cover, but it’s good to know that all of those options are there if you need them. There are also nine design profile sweaters that show you how all the pieces go together that you can knit through to help you understand some of the concepts. 

A fit kit in the back walks you through the math so you’ll feel comfortable with things like determining your rate of shaping, adding darts, shaping diagonals and calculating the lengths of curved edges, among other things. 

The good news is you’re not going to need all of these tools for every project. The better news is that now you know these are things you can do to make your sweaters fit better, and you’ll have McBrien Evans as your able guide every step of the way. 

While this might not be a book you want to spring on a new sweater knitter, it’s a guide that everyone who enjoys knitting garments should have on hand to reference ways to make sweaters they want to knit — from written patterns or designing for themselves — that much better. 

About the book: 192 pages, hardcover, 9 patterns. Published 2026 by David & Charles. Suggested retail price $29.99.