Finally learning stranded or Fair Isle Knitting

Meet Miriam Tegels, the world's fastest knitter.

Knit Picks put together a video with Miriam's tips on how to be a speedy knitter.

I am not what you call a fast knitter and I don't necessarily aspire to be a speed knitter but who wouldn't love to pick up the pace, especially on those long boring stretches of stockinette?  I've always been told that the Continental method is a faster knitting style, but I've knit so many years as a thrower that my attempts to hold the yarn in my left hand have left much to be desired, and I eventually branded myself as having an untrainable lefty.  And I believed that this seriously impaired my ability to knit Fair Isle patterns. 

I have, however, really longed to be able to strand, or knit with two colors in the same row.  Particularly after I saw Bev, a speedy two-handed knitter at my LYS, churning out gorgeous Norwegian mittens, stranding away with both hands.  Check out some of her mittens here.  And then, "KnittingMaryB", my knitting sister-in-law, made this hat for my nephew and posted it on Ravelry:  Ian's Skull Cap.  It's a great winter hat for hip young guys and another beautiful example of well-done stranding.   

My first few attempts at stranded knitting were exercises in frustration. The front of the fabric came out puckery and uneven and the back was a tangled mess.  Since then when I come across a pattern that I love which requires stranded knitting, I pass them with a sigh.

Bev's Norwegian mittens and Mary's beautifully knit Skull Cap were the pushes I needed to give this stranded knitting thing one more go.  I found two patterns that caught my eye, one requiring changing the strands for every single stitch and changing colors every few rows--go big or go home, right?  I got some yarn out of my stash, put on a nice calming CD and sat cross-legged on my bed (one of my favorite knitting spots) and started out with new determination. 

I tried holding the yarn in just my right hand, switching the yarns after every stitch, carefully lifting up and over each time making sure I wasn't pulling the tension to tight, and then straightening. It didn't look half bad, actually pretty darn good, I thought. I was making progress. But I won't tell you how long it took me to get through one row of 60 stitches. This knitter strands with the right hand only--phenomenal! Didn't work for me though!


Here a KnitsPicks video on stranded knitting.  Makes it look so simple!

I knew I had to get my left hand going or it was no Fair Isle for me.  I put one color yarn in my left hand and one in my right.  I let all the past efforts and go and decided I was going to do what felt most comfortable and natural to my fingers.  Finally after all these years of knitting my brain waves coincided with my left fingers and it clicked. 

Here are my first samples of (successful) stranded knitting:

 

No more passing by those Fair Isle sweaters and Norwegian mittens which I had left for all the other knitters out there to enjoy!  I just walked through the wardrobe door into knitters Narnia....I am a happy knitter.   Who knows, maybe next I'll be knitting Continental with some of those speedsters out there!

Here's one more helpful video featuring how Eunny Jang manages stranding.  She is one of my favorite knitters when it comes to explaining things in a simple way.  Her calm competence makes whatever knitting technnique she is demonstrating seem very manageable. 

Happy Knitting,

Josey