Ladderback Jacquard... Can It Be That Hard?

Although it’s warm here and wool is not currently my favourite thing to touch, I’ve been working on my Scrappy Checkers for my little boy. Just a few rows here and there amongst trying to design a top (this has become a saga for the ages… most recently on my 4th iteration I realised several inches in that I had twisted my cast on. Bad times.) and of course working on our many exciting future projects. But I kept thinking about a term that was used by Scrappy Checkers designer Erin Guimond, and that I’ve heard a lot over my knitting years; ‘ladderback jacquard’. It kind of sounds like a character from a TV show set in medieval times, or maybe a type of chair?

Either way, I didn’t actually know what it was, but it turned out it’s a very smart way to keep floats very neat if you’re doing colourwork; specifically it’s used for if your floats are going to be long, for example more than 5 stitches. In general these longer floats are avoided because they tend to get messy, and it’s much harder to maintain tension if they are that long. Not to mention they would get caught very easily when putting your sweater/mitts/hat on and off. No one wants fingers caught in floats do they? But with ladderback jacquard these floats are neat and tidy, and very much doable, which opens up new possibilities in terms of colourwork designs.

So when Meghan suggested we do a tutorial on ladderback jacquard, I was nervous because I was still very new to this technique. Ok I will admit, I still didn’t really know how it actually worked, just what it did. However, I then looked into it and it’s SO much simpler than I thought!! This is a useful reminder to not be fooled by the names of things. And also a useful reminder that the world of knitting techniques is vast and continually interesting. I was so much poorer for not knowing about ladderback jacquard, and I am so impressed with it! Just the sheer ingenuity, even if I don’t use it often, it’s so nice to learn about a new way to do a thing. It’s so easy to get stuck in a rut and only use the things you already know, and so fun to add something to your repertoire. It always reminds me of why I was so enamoured with knitting in the first place, and why it has stayed so central for me for so long.

So now that I have learned how to do it, I wanted to show you, and that’s exactly what I will do. Hopefully you will think it’s as interesting and exciting as I do.