Okay, maybe I am a knitting nerd, but I find it fascinating that stranded knitting is part of so many different knitting traditions. Fair Isle, Estonia, Norwegian, Icelandic. Stranded knitting was used to thicken the knitted fabric by carrying the two strands and alternating them in a pattern design.
My first fascination with stranded colorwork was with Dale of Norway patterns.
Beautiful ski sweaters that harken back to the traditional Norwegian lusekoft. This is the company that designs the team sweaters for the Norwegian Olympic team. Diving into these patterns is just a joy. They are written in a very efficient way with minimal finishing, and assuming you have a good working knowledge of sweater construction. Challenging? Absolutley, but once you finish, the sense of accomplishment is big. I love working with charts, for some reason they seem to knit up faster. I find I want to work just one more row much in the same way I like to read just one more page of a good book.
I rarely dye muted colors. I love love love retina searing punch you in the face super saturated colors. I love unexpected combinations. And I also love the look of hand dyed semi solids. In stranded work hand dyed yarns add a depth to the design that is just gorgeous. Here is the very beginnings of a pair of stranded mittens using my Sizzle Pop and Evil Grapes yarn.
Because why use black and white when you could use hot pink and purple…just saying… I am using the Deathflake mitten pattern by Sissel KB.
There are so many awesome stranded knitting patterns out there that would work with hand dyed yarn.
Here are some of my personal favorites:
Designing Your Own
Interested in designing your own stranded mittens? Here is a link to some graph paper to do just that.
What are your favorite stranded knitting patterns?
Are you working on some that you wanna share pix (I LOVE LOVE LOVE seeing pix of what you are working on) Leave me a comment below, post it on the Facebook page or shoot me an email
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Fiber artist Stacey Budge-Kamison AKA UrbanGypZ lives and works in Cary NC. She can also be found knitting in public, hammering out her latest e-course at local cafés and spinning yarns in her booth at her favorite arts festivals. A designer at heart, Stacey has decided that her mission is to help fellow knitters, crocheters, weavers and felters embrace their own style and creativity by exploring fiber art as it is a part of their everyday life and helping them embrace the title of artist no matter where they are in their journey. 
I was wondering how you rotate yarn balls when doing stranded knitting or do you have to rotate for color pooling?
I don’t rotate balls when doing stranded work. I have not had an issue with pooling. But if I did get pooling, the stranded part might break it up just fine. but if it looked odd then I woul shift the pooling yarn by a foot or so to break up the pooling, or work with a different yarn.