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Catching Floats in Tunisian Crochet Stranded Colourwork – Part 2

A note or two on this exercise:

  1. Don’t be alarmed by the giant bull clip on the end of my fabric! It’s just there to counter this thick fabric’s tendency to curl.
  2. The middle (Pink) block of colour is where we will be catching floats.
  3. I started with 15 chains and worked a few rows of 13 TSS before I got stuck into the stranded colourwork TKS section

A. Insert hook TKS-wise into 1st st, Yarn Over with Main Colour (MC) and pull loop through onto hook – 2 loops on hook.

snuggle hook under bar
push out to back of fabric
yarn over with Main Colour & pull yarn through fabric

B. Insert hook TKS-wise into 2nd st, Yarn Over with Contrast Colour (CC) and pull loop through onto hook – 3 loops on hook.

snuggle hook under bar
push out to back of fabric
yarn over with Contrast Colour (CC) & pull yarn through fabric

C. Insert hook TKS-wise into 3rd st, Yarn Over with MC and pull loop through onto hook – 4 loops on hook.

snuggle hook under bar
push out to back of fabric
yarn over with MC & pull yarn through

D. Insert hook TKS-wise into 4th st, Yarn Over with CC and pull loop through onto hook – 5 loops on hook.

snuggle hook under bar
push out to back of fabric
yarn over with CC & pull yarn through

Here’s the lay of the land right now:

from right to left:
Loop on hook at the beginning (Main Colour), TKS (MC), TKS (Contrast Colour), TKS (MC), TKS (CC)

Exercise 1 – Catching Main Colour Floats on the Forward Pass.

This is where it gets fun!

We will be crocheting with CC and “catching” the MC yarn as a “float”.
The resulting stitch will be CC (pink) but the back of the st will have the strand of MC (yellow) running through it.

insert hook as for TKS (see above)
bring MC to front of fabric
Yarn Over with CC
return MC to back of fabric
add a little tension to MC and then draw CC through fabric

The next CC st along can be completed as usual.

insert hook TKS-wise into next stitch, and Yarn Over with CC
draw Yarn Over through fabric

There is no need to catch a float with every single stitch.
Usually, I just catch every even-numbered stitch in a block of colour. You may choose to do it less frequently if you prefer, but if you are making mittens, I recommend you catch your floats pretty frequently so they don’t snag on wiggly fingers or chipped nails.

Once you’ve worked across the colour block your hook will look like this:

the little blips of yellow you can see through the pink stitches are the floats I have caught. They are really only visible here because I have used a slightly bigger hook than recommended for this yarn so you can see clearly what I’m doing. Those blips are far less visible when you’re working with the correct hook size for your tension.

Working the end of the row will leave us with this layout on our hook:

Exercise 2 – Catching Main Colour Floats on the Return Pass.

To begin, work the following:
With MC, YO and draw yarn through 1 loop, YO and draw loop through 2 sts.
With CC, YO and draw yarn through 2 loops.
With MC, YO and draw yarn through 2 loops.
With CC, YO and draw yarn through 2 loops .

That’ll get us here:

Now, luckily, the Return Pass floats are caught with the exact same motions as the Forward Pass floats.
Let’s go through it visually:

bring MC to front of fabric
Yarn Over with CC
return MC to back of fabric, and then draw CC through 2 loops

The next stitch is worked as normal:

Yarn Over with CC
draw Yarn Over through 2 loops

Again, as with the Forward Pass, you don’t need to do this every single stitch, but I recommend you at least do it every few stitches. I catch my return pass floats every second stitch when I’m working mittens.

From this point on, the rule is as follows: Yarn Over with the colour that is displayed SECOND from the hook.
In the case of the photo below, the next Yarn Over would be MC (Yellow):

When complete, this is what the Right Side will look like:

As for the Wrong Side?
Aaah, look at all those lovely caught floats!

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