Tips and Techniques: Color dominance in stranded knitting

If you’ve been around our shop at all this season or taken a look at the class list, you’ll notice that our Latvian Mitten class, taught by Laurie Bellin, has been all the rage. We’ve run this class numerous times. Student’s have felt like they’ve climbed a mountain but ended up triumphant and like they can tackle anything. One key discussion we’ve noticed during each of the classes is about color dominance and I thought I’d share a little bit more info about it here and a great example.

In stranded knitting,often referred to as fair isles knitting, you carry the multiple colors of yarn in the back of your work.  As the yarns travel along behind the work, one strand will be carried below the other. This bottom strand of yarn will become slightly more prominent in the finished object. This is because its stitches will be just a fraction larger than the stitches of the other strand.

It might not seem like this could all make a big difference, but it really can. One student in the latest class gave us a terrific example of what can happen when one yarn becomes dominant over the other and how it can affect a finished object.

Can you see it? No it's not an optical illusion.

Here you can see just how one color can be more dominant over the other and what happens if you don’t keep the dominant yarn consistent.

Many experienced knitters suggest the contrasting color should ride below the main color when being stranded behind the work. Therefore the main color would be the top yarn and the contrast would be the bottom yarn.

To help you remember which yarn goes in which hand or rides above or below you may want to write it on your pattern just as you do when you jot down which symbol on you chart matches each color use. For example:
Black = background color / right hand or top yarn
White = contrast color / left hand or bottom yarn

Thanks to Jenny for lending us her pics of the gorgeous mitts and showing us a fabulous example of color dominance.