New (Old) Favorites: Duplicate Stitch & Colorwork Knitting

I used to think of duplicate stitch simply as a way to avoid intarsia, but it's also a great technique for weaving in your ends invisibly, especially in colorwork projects. Earlier in the year, I knit the Very Important Villager hat in two naturally-dyed colors of Rambouillet yarn from Shepherd's Lamb. This breed-specific wool yarn has great stitch definition and lends itself well to colorwork:

Fun fact: if you consistently hold one color below the other as you work, the colorwork motif will look crisper (this is known as color dominance). Plus, the wrong side will look just as lovely as the right!

If you're new to duplicate stitch, here is a great tutorial video from Very Pink Knits. I think of it as a 3-step process: you start by bringing your yarn up in the middle of the stitch BELOW the one you want to duplicate, then behind both bars of the stitch ABOVE the stitch you are duplicating. You return the yarn through to the wrong side the same way you started (in the middle of the stitch BELOW the one you want to duplicate).

This technique can also be used to fix mis-cross cables, as shown in this YouTube video - how cool is that?!

How are you using the duplicate stitch technique in your knitting projects? Let me know in the comments!

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