Learn a Method for Jogless Color Joins in the Round

Knitting in the round is a lot of fun, and at least makes projects feel like they go more quickly, but one problem with circular knitting comes when you knit stripes and you have that little jog where the colors don’t line up perfectly.

I’ll admit that I don’t always take the time to make a jogless join, but it’s certainly nice to do if you’re making something for a gift (and really for yourself, too). And it’s not that much more difficult, as you’ll see from this tutorial from Creative Knitting magazine.

This method involves working a few stitches double-stranded and then lifting the first stitch from the first round of the new color and working it together with the first stitch on the second round of that color. This pulls the new color up a bit and makes more of a solid line.

You can see the effect in the picture. Looks great!

How do you deal with jogs in colorwork? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

[Photo via Creative Knitting magazine.]

Generally I like knitting patterns where I feel like you can use whatever yarn you have (because my stash is big enough and I want to use it, thanks) and make a successful project. This is one of those times when a special yarn makes the process that much easier.

The Floral Bouquet Shawl from Xandy Peters uses a specific extended color pooling yarn from Feisty Fibers, which allows you to place the bobble flowers with increasing frequency as you knit the project.

It starts with a solid color yarn, then the two color yarn is added in, and you make a bobble whenever you encounter the color pops. This would be hard to replicate with other yarn that doesn’t have the extended color pooling built in.

The background of the shawl is ribbed, making the project reversible.

The shawl uses fingering/sock yarn and comes out to be an asymmetrical triangle that’s 54 inches/137 cm long and 36 inches/ 90 cm deep and 60 inches/150 cm across the top edge.

Xandy says the pattern is for intermediate to advanced knitters. Knowing how to work traditional bobbles would probably help, but there’s a great video tutorial for how to work the floral bobbles so you can practice on other yarn or even incorporate the bobbles into other projects.

The bobbles are five-petaled flowers but they also kind of look like starfish to me, which could be fun on a child’s cardigan or other pattern. They’d also be fun on the leg of a sock or around the brim of a hat for extra whimsy.

The pattern includes photo and video tutorials, and written and charted instructions. It also includes tips on what to look for if you choose to use different yarn for the project, and instructions on how to dye your own yarn to use in the project.

If you want to give it a try, you can find the pattern on Ravelry.

[Photo: Xandy Peters]

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