Thank you for passing us the baton Julie, Knitted Bliss.
Everyone loves hand dyed yarn. From the subtle shading of a semi-solid to the cacophony of variegated, there is something for everyone. You can find speckles and flecks of colour that will appear like sprinkles on your fabric, or longer blocks of colour that pool and shift and stripe together.
Heavily variegated yarns live very comfortably in the sock knitting realm, where the risk of unsightly pooling can be hidden in shoes. But the best think about handdyed yarns are the colours, and relegating them exclusively to feet isn’t always the place these handdyed yarns want to be. Especially now, in March, when the weather is still grey and spring is a promise not a reality, we want that colour to be visible. We want it around our necks and near our faces so that we can see it!
The trick is to find a pattern that works with the handdyed yarn to let all it’s crazy colours shine. Patterns such as cables or certain texture stitches get lost very easily in variegated yarns, the colour overwhelms and hides them. The texture needs to be allover enough that it doesn’t compete to much with the colour, but also knit in a way that disrupts the potential for pooling.
Enter the Palette mini-collection from Inspiration Knits aka Louise Zass-Bangham. There are two patterns, Painted and Fresco. They each have the same structure and stitch pattern, but Painted is written for 100g of fingering weight, and Fresco is written for 300g of DK/light worsted. This means that there are endless possibilities for yarns to use! The allover texture of the vintage stitch pattern that Louise found in Mary Thomas’ Book of Stitch Patterns is a sort of faux-cable/braid, so it does an amazing job of breaking up colour.
In a variegated yarn the pattern allows the colours take centre stage, as seen below with Fresco knit in Tango by Blissful Knits. Wouldn’t it look great in Alegria sock yarn?
We also love Painted it in Fyberspates Vivacious. Here the semi-solid nature allows the texture of the stitch to come forward instead. We are dreaming of it in the subtle shades of Fyberspates, or even Noro Tokonatsu?
Louise is running a KAL over on her blog that starts on April 1st. You can join in on her Ravelry group. The next stop on the blog tour is yarn dyer Miss Babs!
What yarn would you use for a Palette shawl or scarf? Let us know in the comments below and you’ll might get your hands on your very own Palette Collection. We’ll draw a random winner of this giveaway, who’ll receive a download code for the collection, next Friday April 2nd.
UPDATE – The winner of our Give Away is Michelle, you should find the download code for your copy of the Palette Mini Collection ebook in your inbox. Congratulations!
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