Neat little stripes

We've had a few requests about how to make nice neat colour transitions in crochet, and it's a question that comes up often in class, so we thought it would be a good idea to post about it here. This is one of those places where the obvious thing to do isn't optimal. You'd think that you'd take up the new colour right at the beginning of - complete the last stitch of the previous round and then join in the new colour. But this gives you an uneven, raggedy transition. Instead, try working the very final pull through of the last stitch of the previous round with the new colour, essentially joining in the new yarn a step before you think you need. In the picture below, the second two-loop pull through of the last treble is being worked with the yellow yarn: And here's that last stitch of the row completed, with the new colour peeking up through to form the new row: When you do this, you end up with the colour changing neatly at the start of the new row, like this. See how one row is completely in the pink and the next completely in the yellow, with no messy overlap? There's a lot of stripy things under way here, so we'll very shortly be looking at working neat little knitted stripes too.