Blizzard: perfect for your first colorwork
Roughly a year ago I polled my Instagram audience and discovered that a full half of respondents did not knit colorwork or considered themselves a beginner-level colorwork knitter. These results surprised me because I knit a TON of colorwork. Colorwork is my absolute favorite so I couldn’t let half of my Instagram friends go without knowing how to knit it!
I designed both Skift (the baby / child version) and Blizzard (the adult version) specifically for someone’s first ever colorwork. It could be your first colorwork or you first colorwork yoke sweater. Either way, Blizzard was designed just for you.
The yoke starts out with three sections of a 2-stitch repeat. This gives you a good warm up to get used to holding two strands of yarn and to practice working with both hands. Then the motifs grow slightly bigger to bring more interest to the design and to help you practice the colorwork knitting skill further. All of the repeats are very easily memorized so that you can focus on managing two strands of yarn and the tension of the floats. All of the increase rounds are in plain, main color rounds in an easily memorized repeat so that you don’t have to worry about remembering colorwork and increase repeats. The floats are kept short so that you can more easily manage their tension.
Now at this point you are probably wondering what on earth a float is. If you are brand new to colorwork, you are going to want to start by watching my colorwork tutorial. The tutorial is in-depth and covers everything you will need to know to get started knitting colorwork. In the tutorial I explain:
- How to read a colorwork chart
- How to easily keep track of where you are in the chart
- How to hold your yarn for knitting with two colors
- Joining a new color
- Color dominance
- What a float is and how to manage their tension
- Increase rows and why a chart might have “no stitch” sections
- How to work a m1L increase
You can find the tutorial on my YouTube channel. Just click on the video below to watch it.
You can find the pattern for Blizzard both here on my website and on Ravelry. You can use the code BLIZZARD for 15% off now through January 28, 2022.
Bare Naked Wools is offering a discount on the yarn used in the pattern. Use the code BLIZZARD10 for 10% off any purchase of 3 or more skeins of Better Breakfast DK now through January 27, 2022.
If you don’t know how to knit colorwork, I hope you make 2022 your year to learn! The whole process of planning and knitting a colorwork sweater is so joyous, and I want you to experience that as well.