{"id":75,"date":"2013-07-10T09:23:39","date_gmt":"2013-07-10T14:23:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.melfraz.com\/lemonbalm\/?p=75"},"modified":"2013-10-27T15:30:40","modified_gmt":"2013-10-27T20:30:40","slug":"variegated-yarn-part-1-working-in-rows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.melfraz.com\/lemonbalm\/?p=75","title":{"rendered":"Variegated Yarn, Part 1: Working in Rows"},"content":{"rendered":"

Man, I’m a sucker for some variegated yarn.<\/p>\n

It can look so nice in the skein.<\/p>\n

\"Mary<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Rainbow!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Patons
\nGray scale!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"
\nBlues!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Bernat
\nDark Rainbow!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

All the colors look fantastic together – and I want all those colors in my project.<\/p>\n

The possibilities seem endless.\u00a0 But they’re not. That’s the problem with variegated yarn – what you see on the skein is not what you will see in your knitting and crocheting.\u00a0 Furthermore, you have very little control over how the colors will play out in your work.<\/p>\n

I have abandoned many a project with variegated yarn due to being unhappy with how the colors of the yarn work together in that particular pattern.\u00a0 The trick to effectively using variegated yarn is to carefully plan how to use it with your project.\u00a0 This is just like making a swatch – it takes time up front but saves you time in the end.<\/p>\n

Unless it’s hand dyed, variegated yarn is made with a repeating pattern.\u00a0 The yarn below has a very simple pattern.\u00a0 If you follow from the bottom up, you can see that there is a longer section of brown, a shorter section of tan, a shorter section of white, a longer section of orange, a shorter section of white, a shorter section of tan, and repeat.\u00a0 Basically, there are two main parts – one long section of brown surrounded by short sections of tan and one long section of orange surrounded by short sections of white.\u00a0 We could abbreviate this as TBBTWOOW.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0520b\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The rigidity and simplicity of this pattern has consequences for how it will work up.<\/p>\n

If you knit or crochet back and forth in rows, you will get something like this:<\/p>\n

\"RowsShort\"<\/p>\n

Notice how each color section zigzags back and forth.\u00a0 The orange and brown, which are opposite each other in the TBB<\/span>TWOO<\/span>W color scheme, are also opposite each other in the zigzag pattern.\u00a0 the tan and white form a less discernible zigzagging pattern in the background.\u00a0 If you do not do any increases or decreases, this pattern will repeat just like this for the full length of your work.<\/p>\n

If you don’t like the way the colors mesh, you can try rows with more or fewer stitches.\u00a0 You will still get the zigzag pattern, but the colors will line up differently:<\/p>\n

\"RowsLong\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When working in rows with variegated yarn, the edge of the rows looks different from the center.\u00a0 In the detail below, you see that, at the edge, there are two consecutive rows of the same color, but that this ends as you move further into the center.<\/p>\n

\"RowEdge\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This is due to the fact that when you end one row you are unlikely to end right at the point of a color change, so of course you begin the next row with the same color.\u00a0 It doesn’t matter how many stitches you have in a row or even if you do increases and decreases – you will always get this effect when working in rows with variegated yarn.<\/p>\n

You will also see colors start to double up in the middle of the piece when working in rows that are long enough for more than half the color pattern to be used in one row.\u00a0 We can divide the longer piece above into roughly seven sections:<\/p>\n

\"RowsLongWithLines\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Sections 1, 3, 5, and 7 have this double color effect.\u00a0 You can even see that opposite colors (remember the\u00a0TBBTWOOW schema) occur in the same row in sections 1 and 5 and in sections 3 and 7.\u00a0 For example, wherever you see brown in section 1, you see orange in the same row in section 5.\u00a0 Wherever you see white in section 3, you see tan in section 7.<\/p>\n

As you become more familiar with these patterns, it will be easier to judge from the beginning if you have the right variegated yarn for the project.<\/p>\n

Next part: working in the round…<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Man, I’m a sucker for some variegated yarn. It can look so nice in the skein.   Rainbow!     Gray scale!     Blues!     Dark Rainbow!     All the colors look fantastic together – and I want all those colors in my project. The possibilities seem endless.\u00a0 But they’re not. That’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,5],"tags":[7,6],"class_list":["post-75","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-variegated-yarn","tag-tutorial","tag-yarn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.melfraz.com\/lemonbalm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.melfraz.com\/lemonbalm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.melfraz.com\/lemonbalm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.melfraz.com\/lemonbalm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.melfraz.com\/lemonbalm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=75"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.melfraz.com\/lemonbalm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":116,"href":"https:\/\/www.melfraz.com\/lemonbalm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75\/revisions\/116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.melfraz.com\/lemonbalm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=75"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.melfraz.com\/lemonbalm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=75"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.melfraz.com\/lemonbalm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=75"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}