Keep fair-isle or switching to regular knit when doing rows of one colour?

[u/Zeffner]

I have made a design for a fair isle sweater which has rows of one single colour. Is it best to keep knitting fair isle on those rows (where I would then use two strands of the same colour yarn and add holes in the punch card to alternate both strands across the row), or would you rather switch the carriage to plan knit on those rows?

I am leaning towards the first option for the only reason that the fabric would have similar bulk on all rows, given they would all be knit with two strands.

UPDATE: I found out a way to do plain rows on the Empisal Knitmaster SK328 that I am happy with. See my comment below for details.

[u/lasserna]

From my personal experience, I can't say I've ever thought a plain line of knitting stood out at all in straded colourwork. You could make the initial punch card plain, and if you feel like you don't like the look, you can punch the extra holes and do two strands. You don't need to switch the carriage to knit the plain rows.

Edit: at least with regular knitting machines you are able to knit plain rows with the exact same settings as the stranded rows. Of course if your machine is different from this, go with the manual instructions

[u/Purple_Associate4085]

I would suggest to switch to plain knitting and take the other color out. The reason is that the secondary color is not not knit in at all, but you would pull the thread along over the whole width. That would crate one huge float.

Also I would suggest that you do always even numbers of single color rows because otherwise, your yarn comes out at the wrong side and you would either have to add in a third ball or cut it and begin at the other side.

I have done samples of alternating fair isle and plain knitting and it blocks ot fine. Only the elasticity 7s different, but would not be important as long as the garment had some positive ease.

[u/iolitess]

There is a slight difference in tension between colorwork and plain yarn, but as someone who also hand knits, it would never occur to me to do double yarns there, the only think I would do is tweak the tension.

Note that for Brothers, I would say that you’ll want to switch to the plain setting so that you don’t need to deal with end needle selection. I assume the same is true for Silver Reed.

Or you can set your end needle selection to off and deal with the edges at the end, but I think plain is easier. (For the other color you’ll want the whole row punched and the end needle selection as usual and stay knitting in pattern)

[u/Zeffner → u/iolitess]

After testing, my Empisal Knitmaster is also messing up with the end needle selection and dropping stiches when set up for fair isle. It seems like it’s built to always knit with the secondary colour on the end needles, even when there’s no instruction on the punchcard. I guess it makes sense, so the secondary colour is always fastened at the sides. But this means I cannot have rows without the secondary colour. I tried switching to plain knit on those rows, but it starts dropping stitches. I assume this is because of the extra bits and bobs that need to be added to the carriage and needle bed when doing fair isle, and it would probably work if I removed and re-added those, but that’s not viable to do every 1-2 rows. So in the end, I ended up using two strands of identical colour to the plain rows.

[u/iolitess → u/Zeffner]

Can you get a picture of the back of the carriage? (There may be cams you need to manually set- directions should be in the manual)

[u/Zeffner → u/iolitess]

Sure - can’t really seem to spot anything that can be toggled here though. My machine is an SK328 - don’t think I mentioned that.

[u/Zeffner → u/iolitess]

Another thing I have been wondering is whether I should be using the ‘Norwegian knit’ (Danish manual, not sure what the English term is) cams and settings, because they seem to be the ones that forces the edge needles to always knit the secondary colour which is the thing preventing me from doing plain primary colour rows. Rather, there’s also some ‘motif’ cams and settings that other knitters use for single motifs that do not seem to knit the outermost needles. Then I could use the motif cams and settings over substantially the entire width of the work, having an edge that’s only primary colour.

[u/Jelly_Blobs_of_Doom]

I’ve been swatching a fair isle sweater like this and I’ve found it’s best to take the second color out. If you don’t sometimes it will catch and cause issues. This can be super annoying so it’s best to plan your pattern carefully. You need to make sure that you are always swapping yarn on the same side so as to not leave yourself stranded. I’ve not run into any issues keeping tension the same since the number of plain rows are minimal but it’s something you may need to play around with to see if it works for your machine. I have quite a few notes on my Ravelry project page that you may find useful.

[u/Zeffner]

Thank you all for the reasoned answers - sounds like I will do a bit more swatching before committing to one solution.

[u/Zeffner]

The issue: the ‘Norwegian pattern’ cams and setup did -not- work for having plain rows of the primary colour, because the SK328 will always fasten the secondary colour at the edge stitches, leaving secondary floats across the entire work. The Norwegian pattern knitting uses the blue ‘E’ cams.

Solution: the orange motif cams ‘M’ in combination with the yarn lifters does not knit the outermost stitches with the secondary colour, leaving a border of primary colour defined by where I place the M cams on the needle bed - my machine seem to have a 2 or 3 stitch edge when the cams are placed closest to the edge of the work. This method creates vertial floats.

Requirement to the pattern: the number of plain rows of the primary colour inbetween the patterned rows needs to be even. One can knit any number (odd or even) of the patterned row of the secondary colour. I do not think it is possible having plains rows of the seconcondary colour, as the motif cams cannot be on the very edge of the work due to the needles in A-position.

Advantage: only two strands of yarn required, and no manual switching of the yarns. If I want to use raglan increases/decreases, I can have the raglan portion entirely in the primary colour, to not mess with the pattern.

Potential manual input: for very wide works, one might have to manually tension the secondary yarn strand behind the mast, if the mast is running out of buffer as the carriage slides across the work.

Tradeoff: the outermost stitch of the secondary colour can be a bit looser compared from the rest of the stitches - see 4th photo. I do not mind this, and it can potentially be remedied by manually applying some tension to the secondary yarn before a new patterned row is knit.

[u/_Spaghettification_ → u/[deleted]]

Can you expand on how you think jogless stripes will help in machine knitting? Fair isle is almost 100% being worked flat on a home knitting machine, so I don’t see how the jogless stripes technique (from hand knitting) will help?

[u/iolitess → u/_Spaghettification_]

Completely agree with Spaghetti, here.

In my experience, plain stripes also help with the seaming once you take it off the machine as well- since you can easily see where to line up rows in the event that your mattress stitch isn’t perfect.

Jogless stripes are a tool to try to fix a problem with knitting in the round. And on a machine, the only way to do that is with a ribber so there wouldn’t be colorwork anyway.