How to carry the yarn in stripes?

Question

So, I’m knitting a swatch with both vertical and horizontal stripes, basically a plaid that’s fully knitted and not with the third color woven in. For most multicolor patterns, I have done it by just cutting the yarn at each color change. But for this swatch, I think I want to carry the yarn up. Here’s the swatch currently from both sides:

Knit Side, you can see the 2 color cast on I used.

Purl Side, you can see the floats of the stranded colorwork I’m doing for the vertical stripes. On the first purl row, I caught the longer black floats by doing this:

1. Purl 2 red stitches
2. Slip third stitch purlwise
3. Pick up black float
4. Slip the third stitch back, again purlwise
5. Purl the red stitch together with the float

I did that to make sure that the floats didn’t become visible on the Knit side.

After a few more rows, I plan on knitting a green horizontal stripe. And this is why I’m asking about carrying the yarn, I might need to cut a few ends, but not as many if I don’t carry the yarn and only 1 color would have to be cut that way.

So, how would I carry the yarn up when I have these vertical stripes going on?

Answer 1

I hope you were able to figure something out! If you're talking about carrying the red yarn up as you knit the green stripe, you could do something very similar every other row on the right side as you did when catching your floats; twist or wrap the red yarn around the green once before you begin working the row. This is (slightly) better hidden from the right side when you're slipping the first stitch too. You may see a little of the red on the edge of the object, but I've never had enough to bother me.