Colourwork that pops!

Our last post on colourwork technique was about choosing colours that work together well. Choosing the orange and dark grey in the little swatch above gives a fabric with good contrast: the small diamond motifs pop out pleasingly. But what's happened here? This is the same yarn, the same needles and the same knitter - in fact, it's the other side of the same swatch. But the little diamond motifs look smaller and in places nearly hidden inside the grey fabric. This is yarn dominance: you want the contrast to sing out, not shrink into the background. The difference between the two pictures is simply how the yarn was held. If you want your contrast yarn to be dominant, make sure it's the one that is held beneath the background colour. When you're feeding a colour from each hand, that means simply holding the contrast in your left hand. If you're holding both in one hand, then you'll need to watch which colour is the lower one. And that's it. If you want to see this in action, then cast on a small swatch like ours and experiment. The difference will surprise you.