WIP Wednesday: Colorwork

A few weeks ago I decided I wanted to make a few stockings for my family for the Holiday season. I ordered some kits and they arrived this week. I know I'm in way over my head on this project as I've never really done colorwork before. (I did make a couple of super tiny 1 inch animals before, but that doesn't really count, since they were so small and super easy to make.) And instead of doing the reasonable thing and buying one kit to figure out if I truly do enjoy it or not, I bought 4 kits. Ha! This probably also explains why I have a million balls of yarn in my stash. I'm an all or nothing kind of gal.

In my excitement I casted on immediately. It was all smooth sailing until I got to my first row where I needed to use more than one color. I remember learning that my working yarn should always be the yarn on top, so I made sure to do that. In this particular row, my floats spanned five stitches (see first photo). That seems like a lot. I wasn't sure if this was going to affect my tension or if it's normal and I should just knit with whatever color the chart pattern tells me.


I consulted with some rav friends who suggested my floats should span no more than three stitches in order to keep the tension even and help me avoid accidentally pulling on the floats. So I frogged the first set of floats I did and made my floats span two to three stitches (see second photo).

The last photo shows my progress to date. I know these are famous last words, but I think it's smooth sailing again and it seems simple enough. I don't know why I was scared of doing color work for so long. It does seem simpler and more straightforward than lace. And I love knitting lace and do it all the time.