Boost Your Knitting: Marlisle!

We’ve noticed a lot of marling in the air these days. Knitters are pairing up all sorts of yarns willynilly, just absolutely bonkers about combining yarns.

We applaud this wild and unfettered experimenting, and as the month turns to November, we welcome the brand-new Boost Your Knitting video from Jen Arnall-Culliford that makes the most of working with two yarns.

Marling + Fair Isle = Marlisle.

The marlisle technique is a simple idea that Anna Maltz has spent a ton of time exploring. With this incredibly clever technique, you can end up with three distinct textures and colors within your work.

Sometimes you’re knitting with one color, then with the other color, then—are you ready?—[whispering] both colors at once.

Jen’s tidy video tutorial up top explains the basic marlisle technique. In seven quick minutes you’ll have a whole new way of thinking about colorwork. Even if you’re only an armchair marlisler at the moment, definitely have a look at this video, because it is likely something that you’ve never seen before.

So many possibilities. We are gobsmacked.

The Project This Month? ADORABLE

What is the Boost Your Knitting pattern this month, the canvas upon which you shall perfect your marlisle technique?

Oh good heavens, we bring you a tot with ringlets.

Wearing Anna Maltz’s marlisle delight, the ingenious Sooper Sweater.

See what happens when you have two colors of yarn that are knitted in this technique?

You can play with pattern and texture and color all at the same time.

And what happens when you bestow this pullover upon a child?

Joy, all day long.

How to Get in on Boost Your Knitting

Jen and Jim Arnall-Culliford have developed a way of learning new knitting skills that combines great designers, useful techniques, and beautiful yarns.

Boost Your Knitting features a new project and a new technique each month. When you sign up, digital patterns are delivered, month by month, to your Ravelry library. You can read all the details about signing up right here. Jim and Jen have also collected the patterns in their book Boost Your Knitting.

What’s really fun is that you can order up the yarn kits for seasonal sets of patterns featured in Boost Your Knitting, including the beautiful Something to Knit With 4ply used in the photos above. Find the Autumn Kit here and the Winter Kit here.

We are thrilled to feature each month’s project and video tutorial here on MDK—the videos are worth watching no matter what. But we hope you’ll sign up for the full Boost Your Knitting series, because we think you’ll really enjoy it.

As ever, the conversation in the Arnall-Culliford Knitwear group on Ravelry is never ending and full of help.