Catching Floats in Tunisian Crochet Stranded Colourwork – Part 1

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 (Yellow) 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

In this example I have worked a few individual stitches before we get to the float-catching section of the exercise.
These are worked using alternating yarns like so:

Here’s the lay of the land right now:

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

Are you ready?

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

The next MC st along can be completed as usual.

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, continue by working a TKS with CC, a TKS with MC and draw up a final loop in chain with MC.
Your hook will look like this:

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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 loops.
With CC, YO and draw yarn through 2 loops.
With MC, 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:

The next stitch is worked as normal:

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 CC (Pink):

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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