Two-Handed Two-Color Stranded Knitting

Occasionally you'll hear someone tell you there is only one right way to knit with two colors. I've heard people say that two-handed knitting is the best method. That is complete nonsense. It is the same as saying only English/American knitters can knit lace or only knitters who use circular needles can achieve beautiful hand-knit socks. I think the right method for you depends on your hands and how you hold the needles. Many incredible and extremely advanced color knitters don't use two hands.

I do use the two-handed method and frankly, I adore it. I actually pout a bit if I have to knit some ribbing or a stripe with just one hand. So I do want to urge all new color knitters to try using two hands on a small project. It only took me one sock project to fall in love with this method and the feeling of flow when using two hands.

To me the benefits of two-handed knitting are the relief the dominant hand gets and the sheer speed. It is much faster for me because I can start one of my hands knitting with the second color before I'm even done knitting with the first color with the other hand. I hold the right hand needle like a pencil but for some reason I don't with the left hand needle.




I tension the yarns through my fingers as shown although the yarn is too low on my left hand in this photo. When knitting I keep the yarns above my middle knuckles. The yarn in my right hand will be the background color and the yarn in my left hand will be the dominant color. In Carol Rasmussen Noble's Fair Isle mitten book, she says the stitches made by the left hand will be slightly larger if you're normally an English/American knitter and after looking closely at my knitting, she is definitely right in my case.

My method of weaving the yarns through my fingers is a pain if you need to get up frequently while knitting but I have at least learned how to keep the yarns woven through my fingers like that while changing from one dpn to the next.



To knit the left hand yarn, you knit Continental and either grab the yarn by going over or under the yarn. I go over.



When I need more yarn I simply lift my index fingers like this and pull more yarn out from the skein.



To knit with the right hand yarn I simply knit English/American and wind the yarn around the right-hand needle.

Using a Norwegian Knitting Thimble/Strickfingerhut

First of all, there are several kinds of strickfingerhuts and the kind shown here is NOT the preferred kind to buy. Instead go for a metal one that looks like THIS as it fits your finger better, won't break, and holds the two yarns farther apart which is the whole purpose of this handy gadget. If you google "knitting thimble" you'll find a wide variety - there is even a type that fits over your fingertip like a sewing thimble.

The biggest advantage of using the plastic type shown here is that it can hold three or four yarns. In fact it may even be the best method of knitting 3 colors per row without excessive yarn twisting. Anyway, they're all around $3 so get a few and play with them.

Strickfingerhuts are mainly used by Continental knitters although I occasionally hear of a right-hand knitter who has figured out a way to use one. It normally goes on the left index finger and I like placing it as far down toward my middle knuckle as possible. That way I don't have to lift my index finger so high while knitting.



To use the plastic type, you open it up and insert the strands of yarn and close it up again. With the plastic type I put the two yarns as far away from each other as possible.



To knit the lower yarn you simply go over or under it and grab it and pull it through the knit stitch on the needle.



To knit the higher yarn try doing it similarly to yesterday's post on two colors in the left hand - grab the higher yarn by going over it and pulling through. You can use the rest of your fingers to hold/tension the yarns however you like. Many Continental knitters say that this handy gadget has greatly increased their 2-color knitting speed.

Tomorrow I'll talk about two-handed two-color knitting and this weekend I'll discuss some methods of knitting 3 color rows.

Here are my latest Roy G Biv socks knit in worsted weight yarn from the stash. I wish I'd been able to find a brighter yellow in the stash.

Knitting with Two Colors in Your Left Hand

HOLDING TWO COLORS WITH YOUR LEFT HAND

Continental knitters shouldn't be afraid to try to knit with two colors in one hand because it is done very similarly to how they knit with one color.

With this method you tension both yarns over the left hand index finger. Here's how I do it.



By stranding the yarns as shown (one going over and one going under the middle finger) I can try to avoid the two yarns ending up too close to each other on my index finger. (A strickfingerhut can also help keep the yarns separate but I'll talk about using one tomorrow.)



The yarn lowest on the finger is knit normally - by taking the right hand needle, putting it through the stitch on the left hand needle knitwise, then going over or under the lowest yarn with the right hand needle and pulling it through the stitch. I don't think it matters much whether you go over or under the yarn to grab it. Here I am going under the green yarn.



To knit the color held higher on the finger, nearer the fingertip, you take the right hand needle, put it through the stitch on the left hand knitwise, reach beyond the black yarn and grab the green yarn and pull it through the needle. I've tried grabbing this second yarn by either going under or over the yarn and I've found that using the needle to grab the color by going OVER the yarn is faster for me.



Here the black yarn is pulled through and I'm back to where I started.
As I said, the biggest difficulty I have using this method is how to keep the two yarns separate enough on my index finger so I can easily choose one color to knit. I do notice I lift my left index finger often to help tension the two yarns. Or I can use a strickfingerhut/knitting thimble. More on that tomorrow.

I will have info on knitting with 2 colors in the left hand tomorrow.

This week has been a week of pleasant surprises.


This week's CSA box (not completely local but from farms all over the region) from Los Poblanos Organics is not really a surprise but I just love getting it each week and planning menus around it. I think there is a vegetable pot pie in our immediate future.



Mary Tess surprised me with a lovely box full of Knitpicks Palette in 7 colors, a Red Sox DVD, a mitten cookie cutter and quite possibly the world's only glove knitting bumper sticker.



After several weeks of NEVER using her litter box Miss Bubbles is now completely litter trained. And I really didn't even do anything. I guess I'm just lucky. She got an extra treat today for being such a good girl.

A few amazing finds, and a very subjective text

Magnus von Plessen, Felicity

It is hard for me to imagine a live performance that would have (that I would find to have) the density of some visual art. Yes, I distinguish those quite clearly, mainly by the dilating of senses I experience when watching most performance, as if there was no way of just getting to the point, or points, or of just hitting me with whatever they have. "Just". There is justice in this just, a sense of the right measure, like an object where the proportions feel right. I simply cannot recall a single performance I have seen where the proportions just felt right. It seems time and a live body introduce elements that are somehow completely out of the scope of my spectator experience.
Compare the best you've seen on stage to this:






The above images, by the astonishing Tim Hawkinson, are more than powerful: they range from publicity-like to classical sculpture to highly conceptual (the last one is a self-portrait mapping of all the area the artist sees on his own body, the picture before is a Balloon Self-Portrait, a blown-up mold of the artist), and yet each of them seems complete.
Or see these, by Huma Bhabha:


How are we to compete with the perfection of something that is? Another language, you will say. Another state of presence. And yet, the choice of what to lay my eyes on remains. And diversity is no argument, when time after time what is live seems to be disappointing, less thrilling, less surprising, exciting, fresh and bold than what remains there not waiting for the sight. But then again, it is also less exciting than film, which seems only to live when seen!
Indeed, it is perfectly useless to speak of the spectator's responsibility in all this, when the spectator admits he is not up to it and instead choses something less desperate, even as it may be darker and, at least on the surface, less active.
(Both poor quality reproductions are by Magnus von Plessen)
And yet, after having written all this, I still feel that live art somehow retains an incredible potential. Not because it is live, at least in the sense of having live people in front of you, but rather, in the sense of it being an event, and so, something that remains unexpected, but also unfinished, incomplete, and fragile in its egomaniacal form ("look at me!"). I'm still not sure where this is heading, it remains confused, but it might have something to do with the amazing phenomenon of enjoying something while it is bad, enjoying it because you appreciate it as an event, enjoying the fact that you are in the privileged position of



PS: Here is a picture dedicated to the effort of some colleagues from a theater project that has been on these days:
(The picture is by Amy Stein. I believe the title is Domesticated.)