Welcome to this Arnall-Culliford Knitwear tutorial on setting up your stripes in the Picket Fence Afghan.
The Picket Fence Afghan is a very clever design by Julia Farwell-Clay for MDK's Field Guide No. 7: Ease,
and it uses a garter-stitch based intarsia technique to work a very graphic stripe pattern.
I'm going to show you in this video how to set up the stripes, and we
have a separate video on working the intarsia join for this pattern, so do be sure to check that out.
So the first thing you do is work your first stripe section in one colour.
I'm working a slightly smaller section so you don't have to sit and watch me knit longer rows.
And you work then by knitting your way...
to the middle of the row...
You work the number of stitches it tells you to in the pattern.
Once you've reached the middle of the row this is where we're going to be setting up the first join.
So you drop your working yarn and you then slip the remaining stitches
purlwise so you're not twisting the stitches...
from the left needle to the right needle,
until you've reached the end of the row.
Our working yarn is there in the middle of the row and we've slipped
stitches to get to the end of the row.
You then turn the work, and you're going
to join in your second colour, and you're going to use that second colour to purl.
So the first colour is always used for the knit stitches and the second colour
is used for the purl stitches.
Always leave a bit of an end to weave in later
And now you just purl across all of those stitches that you slipped.
That's the last slipped stitch, and here's the yarn for the knit stitches waiting for me in the middle of the row.
I now do my intarsia join,
as I said, there's a separate video on that.
And we now just use the original colour to knit to the end of the row.
Giving it a bit of a tug, to make sure it's joined neatly
and we're now set up with our two colours joined in
and while we work this stripe, we're going to knit the green stitches and purl the yellow stitches.
Okay? We're all set up there.
So once we've worked a few rows in that pattern, knitting the green stitches
and purling the yellow stitches you will eventually reach the point here,
where you've worked the correct number of garter stitch ridges in the first colour.
As I said, I'm doing a mini version here it's not as many rows or as many stitches as in the pattern,
I wanted to have three ridges, so I've got here... Your last complete green row that went all the way across,
and then I've got one, two, three ridges in the green on the right side.
I've got a marker here to remind me which is the right side.
Once you've joined in your colour it's pretty easy to tell the difference because on
the wrong side you'll have the row where the two colours are linked together.
So that's the right side.
I'm ready to work that right side row, and what I now have to do is I have to
turn the work. So instead of picking up and carrying on knitting with the green,
I've got the correct number of ridges I turn the work and I slip the yellow stitches.
Now the reason we're doing this shenanigans; I should show you that...
is that we've got one less row in the yellow than we have in the green so
we've got three garter ridges in the green but only two in the yellow.
Because you remember we just did that slipping section at the beginning to get going so
what we're doing now is we're finishing off the yellow and to do that turn the
work and we're going to slip the yellow stitches.
Obviously whatever colour you're using will be different but these are the purl stitches
We're slipping them, again not twisting them, we're just moving from one needle to the other,
until we get to the middle of the row where the yarn's attached,
and then we're going to turn the work back to the right side.
Here's our yellow end and we're going to bring it to the front
and we're going to purl, just to finish off,
so that we've got the same number of rows on each side, and you'll see that by purling
to the end here, I'm creating that third ridge that I wanted,
So that you end up with the same number of ridges on each side of the work.
There we go! We have the right number on the knit section... turned the work,
slipped the stitches across, turned it back to the front and finished off that row so that
we now have the same number of ridges on both sides in that striped section and
we're now set up ready to work the next stripe and that's worked in a similar way.
I do hope you found that helpful to see how you set up the stripes in the
Picket Fence Afghan pattern by Julia Farwell-Clay.
You'll find out more about those patterns in MDK Field Guide No. 7, which is called Ease.
I'll pop a link in the notes section so that you can go to their website and see that.
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I do hope you found that helpful. Thanks ever so much for watching. Bye-bye!