Welcome to this Arnall-Culliford Knitwear tutorial. Today I'm going to show you our
basic method for working one-by-one helical stripes. This method is used in
the first pattern in our new ebook Something New to Learn About Helical
Knitting, the pattern is called the Bramante Cowl. Helical stripes are
fantastic because they allow you to set up completely jobless stripes in the
round and you don't have to carry your yarn at the back of the work so you got
a totally smooth finish and it's almost like magic to work. The method I'm going
to show you today here's a method that can be used on any kind of needles when
you're working in the round , so whether you're working on double pointed needles
or a circular or using the Magic Loop method this method will always work. If
you'd like to find out more about Something New to Learn About Helical
Knitting then do visit our website: acknitwear.co.uk
When you work one row stripes in the round normally, because you have one
spiral of stitches, at the beginning and end of the round you reach a point
where one stripe in the old color sits next to a stitch in the new color and
this creates a visual jog line in the knitting. So when you work traditionally
you also have to carry your yarn up the inside of the work at the end of the
round and so you get a bit of a ridge as well. Working helically sets up multiple
spirals of stitches and so every stitch in one color always sits next to the
same color stitches and so you don't get that visual jog and you never have to
carry the work at the wrong side. Here's a sample that's been knitted helically
and here's where the dark grey has been introduced, this is where the extra
spiral stitches has been started and it's been ended up at the top here but
apart from the start and end points, if you look at the fabric you'll see
that the stitches continue completely smoothly all the way around
there's no jog point at all, it's not that the jog has been minimized it's
that there is no jog whatsoever, if you look on the inside, excuse my ends, if you
look on the inside of the knitting there is no point where the yarns have been
carried up, it's just completely smooth spirals of stitches. I'm going to show
you now how to knit helically to create 1 x1 stripes. We're ready to start
working 1 x1 helical stripes, I'm using
Magic Loop method but this method of working helical stripes will work
perfectly well on any type of needle that you prefer to use, so I've knitted
most of around in yarn A I'm just coming to the end of the round and I'm going
to join in yarn B ready to knit with yarn B next , so I like to knit my ends
in as I go so that I have less work to do at the end of the project so that's
all I'm doing here. I'm knitting with yarn A and just catching yarn B at the
back of the work. So I finished my round in yarn A I'm going to slip my end of
the round marker and I'm now going to pick up yarn B that I've joined in at
the back of the work and I'm going to knit in yarn B until I've only got three
of the yarn A stitches remaining.
So I've knitted round with yarn B and I'm coming to my last few stitches of
yarn A and this is what we want we always want to work until we've got just
a few stitches in the previous yarn remaining, I use three because I find
that easy to scoop up in one movement and I don't work to the end of the round
because it allows us to keep the tension more even in all the stitches. When you
start knitting with yarn A you want to have this the needle in the stitch
before, so that you don't over tighten that previous stitch so here we are
three stitches remaining in yarn A , we're going to drop yarn B, we're going to slip
three stitches and the marker as well because it happens to be there, so just
slip them along purl wise and we're going to pick up yarn A ready to work
again. Now when we're slipping those stitches we're not slipping them in
order to create a slip stitch in the fabric we're slipping them in order to
move along to reach the end of that working yarn, when we start working with
a yarn in helical knitting it's always the stitch, the stitches are next to each
other you're not carrying the yarn at the back there, you just you're slipping
stitches in order to get back to where you were, so you're leaving those three
stitches unworked for the moment and then slipping along to pick up where you
were in the previous yarn, and now what we've picked up with yarn A we're now
going to knit around until we've only got three stitches in yarn B remaining.
So we've knitted round in yarn A and we've got some yarn B stitches remaining
and we're going to keep going with yarn A until we've got three stitches in the
previous colour left, so we always work, I always work to three stitches, we're then
going to drop the yarn we've been knitting with, yarn A , slip these three
stitches purl wise from the left needle to the right needle, and now you'll see
that we're ready to pick up exactly where we were with yarn B and carry on
knitting with yarn B , and you can see where I've picked it up and worked with
it there the previous stitch was safely on the needle so even if I knit quite
tightly I'm not going to over tighten that previous stitch, and that's really
all there is to helical knitting. You just keep working round until there are
three stitches remaining in the previous colour, slip those three stitches and swap
to your next colour, you can see here this is where I joined in yarn B at the
beginning you will always get that beginning of the spiral where one stitch
of yarn B is surrounded by the yarn A stitches, and if you're just working,
working a short section of stripes it might be that you think that that's
actually less attractive than the normal jog that you'd get if you worked your
1x1 stripes in the standard way and that's fine, alternatively you might
choose to hide that beginning of the spiral by either snugging it right up
next to the rib, or using some other edging that would just disguise it a
little bit, or if you're doing a garment project you might choose to put the
beginning of the spiral in a less obvious place in your project.
I hope you've got a taste of the magic of 1 x1 helical stripes, the
methods are really straightforward and I hope you have a lot of fun trying it out
on different projects. If you'd like to find out more about helical knitting or
any of the other projects that are featured in our ebook do visit: acknitwear.co.uk