Colorwork Help: How to Hold Your Yarn for Stranded Knitting

By Ashley Little

As part of my New Year’s resolution (yeah, remember those?) to perfect some of my sloppier knitting techniques, I decided to start a stranded knitting project. I find that one of the challenges in stranded knitting is figuring out exactly how to hold my yarn, so before I got started I tried out a couple of different options. We all have preferences and habits when it comes to the style and method of knitting that we use. Some of us knit continental while others knit English style. Style is particularly important in stranded knitting because you need an efficient way to hold on to all those different colors. As I soon discovered, sometimes it works to combine those styles! The rules for holding your yarn are not strict by any means.

Check out different options when holding yarn for stranded knitting.

Holding stranded yarn with both hands

Both hands

To see both hands in action, I pulled up Craftsy instructor Eunny Jang’s Choose Your Own Sweater Adventure class, where she uses this technique to make a banded yoke. To try it, hold one strand of yarn in the left hand and the other strand of yarn in the right hand. When you need to knit with the left strand of yarn, pick the strand with your needle Continental style. When you need to knit with the right strand of yarn, throw the yarn English style. I like this style because it seems to move quickly. I’m not constantly picking up and dropping different strands of yarn. Holding both yarns in the right hand

Right hand

If you’re accustomed to knitting English style, or throwing your yarn, then holding both yarns in the right hand might be a good choice for you. I tried two different ways for holding my yarn in the right hand: 1) I wrapped both yarns around my index finger and ring finger (pictured above). 2) I wrapped one yarn around my index finger and the other yarn around my middle finger. When both yarns are in the right hand, you’ll throw the yarn as you stitch. Holding both yarns in the left hand for stranded knitting

Left hand

The left hand works similarly to the right in terms of how you can hold the yarn except that you’ll be picking stitches instead of throwing them. This usually works well for Continental knitters. As with the right hand option, you have a choice of wrapping both strands around your index finger and ring finger (as seen in the photo above) or wrapping one strand around your index finger and the other strand around your middle finger. Try both and see which one feels more comfortable — or try any variation of this. Then you’ll use Continental style — picking the stitches — to knit.

A few tips to get you started

None of these ways of holding yarn are going to feel natural at first. It takes a bit of practice to get into a rhythm and figure out what’s going to work best for you. It also could be that several of these ways work for you. If that’s the case, use them all! As I said before, there aren’t strict rules for how you hold your yarn for stranded knitting, so if a variation of one of these works for you, then go for it. As you’re test out these different holds, one important thing to remember is that you should use the same style throughout a project. Switching your holds can result in inconsistency in the stitches.

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One Response to “Colorwork Help: How to Hold Your Yarn for Stranded Knitting”

  1. Brian Sawyer

    Heads-up to the author. In the second paragraph of the Both Hands section, you have written "When you need to knit with the left strand of yarn, pick the strand with your needle English style. When you need to knit with the right strand of yarn, throw the yarn continental style." English and continental should be switched.