KNITTING WITH COLOR

BRAID

The knitted braid, or "Baltic" braid is an embellishment that looks like you have braided some yarn and glued or stitched it along the surface of your knitting.  It is done with a single color, or two colors.  The braid looks best if it has a few rows of a background color worked in plain knitting before starting the braid and after finishing it.  The braid can be used along the bottom or top of a sweater, hat, or socks.

Based on hand-out from Philosopher’s Wool Company http://www.philosopherswool.com

DOUBLE BRAID:

This braid is done in circular knitting.  It may be possible to work it back and forth, but you would have to reverse some procedures.

Working in the round, knit a few rounds of the color that you want the braid to look like it is lying on (background color).

In the “set up” round, you will knit around alternately with color 1, then color 2. If you are doing your braid in a single color you will not need to do this row, just make sure you have done one knit row in just the color that your braid will be.

{The illustrations in this article will show a 2-color braid.}

You can see, on the right, that there is a previous braid above the two-color ribbing, then there are a few rows of a solid color to offset the next braid.  One round, the "set up round", alternating the dark and the light colors has been knit.

Set up round:

Next you will bring both strands of yarn to the front, because you are going to purl around. MAKE SURE that you always work the same color on the same color. If the stitch is a light color, you will be purling it, again, with the light color.  If it is the dark, color, purl it with the dark color.  {If your braid is a solid color, you will need to use 2 strands of that color, alternating your strands with each stitch.} As you purl, bring the color, or strand, you are going to purl UNDER the previous stitch - every time, all the way around:

Purl dark, coming under light.

Purl light, coming under dark.

The strands of yarn will twist as they go from your work to your yarn source.  You can let them twist, and then the twisting action will be reversed in the next round.

On the following round, you will continue to have your strands to the front, purling the round.

THIS TIME you will bring your strand OVER the previous stitch.

You still work the same color on the same color, and if you are working a solid color braid you will alternate the strands as before.

Continue purling around:

Purl dark, coming over light.

When you are done with this round, be sure and work a few more rounds of knitting with your solid background color to finish offsetting the braid! Viola’!!

You may create a different effect by only working one round of the purling twist, then several rows of your background color for a “single braid”.  A fun design is working the single braid, then double braid, then the single braid again.

You can also reverse the direction of your twisting – the “V” shapes in your braid - by doing the “under” purl row first, THEN the “over” purl row! Give these variations a try!

Extra credit!

If,  like myself, you don’t like to have your yarns so twisted (having a twisted knitter is bad enough!), you may avoid this by rotating your knitting every two stitches!  On your twisted purling round, as you need to bring a color up UNDER the next, you can rotated your project counterclockwise – this works best if you are using the two handed knitting technique and you have one color in each hand.  DO NOT LET GO OF THE YARN IN YOUR HANDS as you rotate the project.  You can work two stitches, getting them “under” before you have to rotate again.

When you are bringing your colors OVER each other, you will rotate your project clockwise.

Give it a try!
Have fun.
Grannie Linda