I’m totally lazy.  I love trying to find  shortcuts and easy ways to do things.  Unfortunately with knitting, there often isn’t an easy way.  (There’s no shortcut for knitting the acres of stockinet for a sweater… you just have to do it.)

Sure, knitting is an effort-heavy process, but don’t lose all hope!  I’ve got a great little trick for making color work super easy.  Let’s imagine that you want to put a nice little fair isle border on the cuffs of your new sweater, or maybe knitting an intarsia heart on a little girl’s hat.  Your project would end up really cute, but it would be a total pain to do.  I don’t know about you, but I like just making plain old stockinet stitch garments (easy!).  So, what’s a girl to do?

That’s where the duplicate stitch comes in.  The duplicate stitch is technically an embroidery technique that you can use to decorate knitted fabric after it has already been knitted so that it looks as if the decorative pattern was worked as the project was knit up.  I like using it for projects that have only a little bit of fair isle (which can be a pain to do for only a row or two at a time), or any pattern that wants you to do intarsia in the round (which is almost impossible).

And, I’ve even made a video for you.  Enjoy, and let me know if you have questions!