Yarn Dominance: Now I See It

Don’t you love it when you continue to learn and grow in your craft. I fully admit that I always have more I can learn about knitting. Yarn or color dominance was one of those things I’d done some reading about, but never really took the time to try out.

Yarn dominance basically means you are knitting so one color stands out better against the other in color work, because its stitches are slightly bigger. When you do color work, you can bring the new color either over or under the current working color. The way I’ve done it is to always pull the new color under the old one, which means one color isn’t any more dominate than the other. To get yarn dominance, you bring the color you want dominate under the other and bring the non-dominate color over to use it.

I haven’t tried it in the past because it always seemed like I was mid-project and I didn’t want to change my gauge or look of my project. Plus, I was comfortable with how I knit. And to tell you the truth, I wasn’t all that sure there was much to it. With my yarn ends project, I finally decided to give it a try.

Oh my gosh you guys, I can’t believe the difference it makes! Here is the cuff of the mitten, the one on the left is done with neither color dominate and the one on the right has the red as dominate.

I wish it looked as clear in these pictures as in person, but the red just pops against the black. You can see on the left cuff how some of the red stitches just seem to disappear.

Once I got the hang of it, it was simple to get into the swing of pulling my yarns this way. Plus, there is a lot less untwisting to do, so my knitting is going faster. Further on in the mitten, I really saw how the single dominate stitches especially looked better than with my old method.

Working like this has really made these mittens shine. Now, that I’ve got this new-to-me technique down I’ll never go back.