All of the free patterns and tutorials on this website are supported by my amazing Patreons! If it wasn’t for them I wouldn’t be able to continue to produce or host freebies. We’d love to have you join us and in return, you get exclusive behind-the-scenes material, member-only discounts and early access to new free content. Membership starts at $1 per month. You can also say thanks for the freebie via the Tip Jar.

Sometimes when working stranded colourwork we find ourselves carrying long floats. Allowing the yarn to float across 6 or more stitches can lead to problems with tension and snagging, and it’s ideal to trap them to avoid any problems. I suggest trapping the yarns every 3 to 6 stitches, depending on the length of the float, it’s not necessary to do it every stitch.

The yarns can be trapped by twisting them however that’s a little cumbersome, especially when you’re using the two-colour yarn management method – at some point you have to untwist the balls of yarn to prevent tangling. Using this method of trapping long floats we can do it seamlessly whilst we knit and avoid unnecessary tangles.

This tutorial is written with the two-handed colour management method in mind where we are using the Continental picking method with the yarn in our left hand and the English thrower method for the yarn in our right hand.

Trapping the right hand yarn as we pick

Trapping the left hand yarn as we throw

Support

As always, if you have a question about this technique or need some help with it, leave a comment below! I’m afraid I’m unable to offer help via email or private message, but you’re welcome to post in our forum.

Print This!

If you’d like to print this free tutorial, either use the ‘Print’ button below or right-click in your browser, adjust the settings to suit your needs, and select ‘Save as PDF’ for a digital copy, or your printer for a paper copy. You can use the scale option to reduce or enlarge the font.