Ch. 3 Things to Watch Out For in Future
You may not need to know all of the following tips on this project, but I want you to be aware of them for the future. If you are using Magic Loop to knit this bag, some of these tips will apply right now. I’ll mainly talk about:
- What you can do to avoid long floats
- Tips for Fair-Isle on Magic Loop and on DPNs
Twist Your Yarns To Prevent Long Floats
In the future, you may come come across a Fair-Isle design that requires you to knit for more than five stitches without switching colors.
There’s nothing wrong with this, but you should watch out, because the longer you go before switching colors, the longer your float is going to be and long floats are easy to snag.
To prevent long floats, learn to twist one strand of yarn around the other every 5 stitches or so.
I’m going to pretend that the chart calls for me to knit 15 stitches in color A, and I’ll show you what to do to keep the floats short:
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Watch The “Corners” When You Are Fair-Isle Knitting On Magic Loop Or DPNs
If you are using Magic Loop to knit this bag, you’ll have one or two loops of cable sticking out between your stitches at certain points in your knitting (what I call “corners”).
Magic Loop is great because you can avoid having to buy lots lengths of circular needles and having to use DPNs on small-circumference projects. It can also cause tangles, puckered edges, and general confusion when it comes to Fair-Isle.
If you know how to do it, you can definitely combine Magic Loop and Fair-Isle knitting, and I absolutely recommend doing it for small-circumference projects like mittens (the alternatives being DPNs or super-short circulars).
For the following video, I transferred my stitches to a 47-inch-long needle to show you what you need to know about managing the two colors and the loops of cable when combining Fair-Isle with Magic Loop.
For those of you who knit with DPNs, this video has tips for you as well.
Restricted Video
This video is available to members of Knitting Superstar University or the following classes:
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One last note about Magic Loop and Fair-Isle knitting: I do not recommend that you use the two-at-a-time technique with Fair-Isle.
In my experience, the trouble of managing four balls of yarn and four loops of cable all going in the round at once is not worth the time you save by knitting two-at-a-time.
I tried it once on some Fair-Isle cuffs on a sweater I was making – it wasn’t worth it. But you can always try it for yourself and find out. Maybe you’ll feel differently.
