TOO VARIEGATED?
QI’m knitting a simple crew-neck jumper in variegated yarn, but try as I might, I just can’t get the pattern to look the same on the back as it does on the front. What am I doing wrong?
Sandra Carol, via Facebook
Apart from a few variegated yarns that are knitted to a specific pattern, to deliver a particular outcome (such as Regia Wool And The Gang Kinda Magic Sock Yarn), most variegated yarns are designed to stripe and merge colours in a random way. This is, in essence, part of the fun of variegated yarn. However, there are ways that you can experiment with variegated yarns and create favourable finishes. Working in stripes allows you to have a certain level of control whilst still allowing your variegated yarn to show o its colour changes beautifully. The cover garment on Simply Knitting’s 200th issue was knitted with a variegated yarn. The yarn was split in half, by unrolling half the yarn ball. This randomises the progress of the colours knitted with, and allows you to knit defined stripes with a single ball of yarn as the colours change at di erent rates. At some points you may want to wind the ball on a little to create a more defined colour contrast between the stripes, but rather than throw this ‘wound on’ yarn away keep it, you may need to deepen the stripe contrast later on in your project. If winding the yarn forward to find the essence of a repeated colour section hasn’t worked, it may be that you have to embrace the true nature of variegated yarn and fall in love with its beautiful randomness.