I have a weakness for complicated knitting.  I find stitch patterns exciting and I love
combining different yarns in the same piece – happily working several panels of
lace, cables, textures all at once with 2, 3, 4 balls of yarn hanging off my
needles.

Sometimes, though, I want to use a bulky yarn next to a dk
weight yarn – or some such combination – and the two will not work up well on
the same size needles.  I have resorted
to putting one yarn on a larger double-pointed needle while knitting the other
yarn on a smaller straight needle.  It is
a little awkward and sometimes the stitches vary more in height (a super-bulky
yarn knit on the larger needle towering above demure lace-weight stitches
worked on a finer needle) than I would like.

All in the past!

I searched through  The Principles of Knitting (June Hemmons
Hiatt)   and found an add-a-border
technique that allows me to execute one panel in a thin yarn and then work up a
second panel in a heavier yarn (on a larger needle) while simultaneously
cozy-ing the two together as if they had been intarsia-ed.  In the immortal words of Queen:  It’s a kind of magic!

One knits up the first panel with a slipped-stitch right
selvedge.  Then, one picks-up-and-knits
the right selvedge edge with a long double-pointed needle (or a couple of them
if necessary). 

Then, with these nice live stitches all along the selvedge
of the finished panel, one knits the second panel and joins it to the finished
panel on each right-side row by working a slip-knit-passover decrease utilizing
the last stitch of the row just knit and the live stitch on the dpn.  Turn and work back along the wrong side.  Turn back and work the right side, perform
the little do-si-do move with the next stitch on the dpn and so on.

I can pick up every other slipped stitch (or 2 out of 3) to
even things out as the stitches worked on the finer needle are probably shorter
than the bulky stitches.  

It looks a bit surreal at first – sort of a Salvadore Dali
kind of knitting, but it is not at all awkward to do.  The dpn just sort of hangs in back of your
work until it is time to join stitches. 
Now that I have worked half the selvedge stitches – and there is room on
the dpn for my rather narrow 2^nd panel – I can just skip the other
straight needle and work my new stitches onto the dpn.

In addition to handling the bulky/dk issue I faced, this
technique could be used to add width to a piece of knitting or to make
invisible side seams or to attach an edging. 
It is a great “afterthought” technique. 
If you have not done a slipped stitch selvedge, you can use a crochet
hook to pick up the stitches on every other row (each join occurs on the right
side row only – so each join represents 2 rows.

And then there are even more possibilities if I should want
to work perpendicularly – i.e. with normal live stitches on a straight needle,
I could start working a 2^nd panel across the top at right angles to
my work…. 

It is starting to get a little trippy, so I will stop here.

Just a little Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom-Di-Ay for the very cool Border
Technique that is making my complicated knitting a little simpler!