Chart Link
Alternate Link I
Alternate Link II

November 8, 2020 Like the chart for Trees in the Snow, I found this chart by doing a Google image search for knitted ornaments/julekulers (links above). This particular chart is a little different in that it starts off with three stitches on each needle and increase by two on every other round, meaning there are always an odd number of stitches on each needle. Nevertheless, I’m still using Arne & Carlos’s Julekuler K 1 below increase.

November 9, 2020 With all these stranded ornaments I’ve been working on, I’ve been checking out YouTube videos for suggestions on how to get more consistent tension with my stranded colorwork. Nothing I was able to find was particularly helpful. Certainly, nothing I found made me go “OH! So that's what I’ve been doing wrong!” Mostly, the tutorials just said to be sure to space out your stitches between color changes. So, I just figured I was knitting too tight (I tend to knit a little on the tight side anyway) and really started spacing out my recently worked stitches.

I thought I was doing petty decently and as long as I stretch out the stitches plenty, particularly when there were long floats, it was working out okay. Then, I really hated how the colorwork came out in my last ornament, the Christmas Balls: Kilim Ball. (Granted, last week was a particularly awful week full of anxiety and uncertainty and I was in a foul mood anyway, so is it really any wonder my knitting suffered as well?) I started to think that the only way to really figure out what I was doing wrong was to wait for this pandemic to clear up, get the vaccine and take an in-person colorwork class with a really good instructor who could hlep. But that’s a while off. So until then, in an effort to further bury my head in the sand distract myself, I tried more YouTube tutorial videos.

I’m glad I did because I found that the kings of stranded Christmas balls themselves, Arne & Carlos, had videos on just that subject. Here’s the ones that i found particularly helpful:

How to control the tension when you knit Continental (Scandinavian) style
How to control the tension when you knit stranded colorwork in the Norwegian (Continental) way.
How to fix uneven tension in your knitting projects
The Norwegian Knit Revisited

So for this Yule ball, I tried out the “Norwegian” knitting method. It’s a little tricky. I’ve been knitting a certain way for so many years now that forcing my hands to do something else feels awkward and I’m sure if I ever were to attend an in-person colowork class, they’d still tell me I’m dong it all wrong.

BUT…

IT’S WORKING!!! The colour changes came out awesomely on this ball and tension even looks consistent between the two colours. No lone CC stitch disappearing into the MC, and no (okay, minimal) exrta-large stitches at beginning or end of a colour change. I even got on a little bit of a role this afternoon!

The disappointing thing is that when I came back to it earlier tonight to finish it up, it felt a little like I was having even more trouble with the new technique than when I started in the first place.

So yeah. Re-training myself on how to knit differently is going to take some time, patience, fine-tuning and of course, practice practice practice. However, with how beautifully the stitches come out, I think it’s worth it.