Have you ever knit stripes in the round only to find that they look a little lopsided? It’s not just you. The nature of circular knitting causes stripes to jog, which means that they don’t line up. The good news is there’s a technique for knitting stripes in the round that straightens up your stripes. Best of all, jogless stripes are just as easy to knit as regular stripes, so they don’t slow down your knitting at all! Are you ready to take your stripes to the next level?
First, let’s take a look at jogged stripes. You’ll notice that the stripes look like they’re shifted up by a row.
Now, let’s look at jogless stripes.
These jogless stripes are much better aligned. Notice that my stripes are all 4 rows tall, but my color changes are only 3 rows tall. That’s because jogless stripes utilize a single slipped stitch to help your stitches sit a little straighter. Let’s go over the super easy steps for this technique:
1. On the round that you’re changing colors, join your new yarn and knit 1 round normally.
2. At the beginning of your second round, slip the first stitch. Knit the remainder of the row in pattern.
3. Keep knitting in pattern!
That’s all there is to it! One easy slipped stitch in every stripe section makes for much happier stripes.
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SusieQ100
And do you slip the stitch knitwise or purlwise??
Zontee
You’ll be slipping purlwise. Unless specified in a pattern, slipping a stitch will be done purlwise so as not to twist your stitches. Hope that helps!
Vanessa
Will this not leave you with a strange”wave” where you have slip-stitched? I can see it working perhaps over a short area, but on a larger area, or with finer wool, I could see it as a problem. On a four row stripe over 60 rows you would lose 15 rows on that stitch.
Zontee
Hi Vanessa, when you slip a stitch, what you’re doing is stretching that stitch so that it sits over two row’s height. Because of this, that column of stitches will be the same height as every other column, despite having fewer stitches worked. Plus, since knit fabric has a lot of give, washing and blocking your finished piece will also help to smooth out any unevenness you might get in your fabric. Hope that helps!
BettyJ
Vanessa, I don’t think you will get a wave. My interpretation is that we will slip the first stitch of the new color on the 2nd round only. Since that slip is only done on a single round of each color change, I don’t think you’ll get any weirdness. I guess I will need to do a round swatch tonight to be sure.