Wrapping Floats

Sometimes in a stranded knitting project there are stretches of stitches in one colour of yarn that span a length of more than 3cm (1.5″). In such areas it is advisable to trap the other yarn (the ‘floating’ yarn) into the main fabric. This is to avoid the tension issues that can result from over-long floats. It also avoids creating loops of yarn that are so big fingers and toes will catch in them. The video below shows how to do this during a stretch of main colour stitches.

The video also includes instruction re lifted increases. In time I intend to replace this with a new video that also covers how to trap in floats of the main colour yarn. This technique is needed much more rarely.

When trapping floats in consecutive rounds of knitting it is best to stagger the traps. Calculate the placement of your traps so that there is at least one stitch column between trapped floats in consecutive rounds. This minimises contrast colour yarn ‘peeps’ between stitch columns. Where yarn traps are stacked in one stitch column or neighbouring stitch columns the yarn peeps are emphasised.

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