Quite often when buying yarn you get the warning to make sure to buy enough for your project to insure that your dye lots match. After all, you wouldn’t want to end up with half the back or part of a sleeve in a different color from the rest of your sweater. With so many artisan and multi-colored yarns to choose from these days, that can be less of an issue if you have a skein that doesn’t seem to quite match the others. But what if you have a solid color and it turns out that something doesn’t match?
My current project is a sontag (a shawl that crosses over the chest and fastens in the back. These shawls were particularly popular in the 19th century in the US and elsewhere, and have regained popularity with some of the recent costume dramas on TV, such as Outlander. I love the idea of having a shawl that will stay in place, and turned to the patterns of Kate Whiting who uses yarns from Loch Ness Yarns for many of her designs for my inspiration. I worked from a pattern called Fennel because I loved the stitch design, but used a smaller needle to make the shawl denser and warmer. I also enlarged it some (to make up for the smaller needle size) and increased the size of the border to amplify the effect of the ruffled edge.
When I went to order the yarn, the coffee-and-cream brown I wanted was down to 2 skeins of BFL and 2 of Shetland, and I was sure that they wouldn’t match exactly. And they didn’t. But I loved them together and decided to make the most of the mis-matched dye/fiber lots by making them a design feature. I really didn’t want to try and disguise the difference, so decided to knit with one skein until it ran out, and then change to a different one as a sharp contrast. It doesn’t show all that well in a photo, but in person, the bands of color are distinctly different, and yet harmonious.
These yarns are “compost dyed” with food waste from a local cafe and from the plants Dwynwen Holcroft gathers from nearby forests, so there are subtle variations of color throughout each skein. The depth of the textured stitches of the pattern I chose also do a good job of highlighting the sheen of the underlying fleece, giving the overall effect of color movement, light and shadow.
While I’m done with the knitting, I have much more to do to finish this. Fortunately for me, as the weather has suddenly turned hot, I’ll be working on weaving the inkle bands that will serve to tie the ends. I’ve done a mock-up with ribbon to give you the idea of the final product. This shawl is really warm, so it’s just as well that I don’t need it for quite a few months!
Other Options
While the shawl was a very specific (and planned) way to use mixed dye lots of a solid-color yarn, there are other possibilities as well. For example, the different dye lot could be used for ribbing, cuffs and neckbands; it could be treated as a wholly different color for intarsia and placed smack dab in the middle of the front. Or it could be used as the yoke of sweater fronts in a textured design. Another way, if the colors are sufficiently distinct, would be to use the “off” color as one color of a two-color cable. The effect could be quite subtle, or very dramatic depending on the color variation as well as the visual impact of texture.
I think there are quite a number of ways to make lemonade from the lemons of mis-matched dye lots…just in time for summer!
In Other News
I learned last week that I’ve been doing something wrong in seaming for every sweater I’ve ever made. I was showing my completed Capstone sweater (the final project for my Expert Knitter certificate), and after having taken out the sleeves 4 times to redo the slope and the shape of the sleeve cap (that’s too long a story to recount!), the under arm of both sleeves — joining the bind offs — was off. My mentor drew the facing stitches and asked me where I was placing my needle. If you look at a schematic of the stitches, you see something like this:
VVVVVVVVV
Of course, in yarn those lines are much softer, so the “V” or “A” shape are somewhat less distinct. However, it makes a big difference if you take your needle under the “V” rather than the “A”. I have always taken my needle under the V, and that offsets the match up across the seam.
I wanted to rip out my hair at that point, but it seemed to me that this should be a reasonably easy fix. EXCEPT, when I took the seams out for the 5th time, the yarn fought back and frayed, breaking several stitches (on both underarms) and creating holes. I was distraught. The holes were on the body of the sweater (it would have been a pain, but possible to reknit the tops of the sleeves to fix this, but taking out the body of the sweater would be out of the question at this point). I used some duplicate stitches to repair as much as I could, but I couldn’t make the under arms sufficiently strong to fix the seam completely. This very well means that my sweater could fail, and my completion of this process would be put off by another year. I’m “swatching” a mocked-up of that seam to show the review committee, with an explanation of what happened. We’ll just have to see if that is an acceptable “fix” for my submission. I’m pretty bummed!
This last bit was written a couple of weeks ago, and since then I’ve turned in the sweater for final evaluation. I am trying not to think about what I might hear next week. Regardless — life goes on.
What’s old is new again
Since I have a little time, I’m returning to a project I started in 2017….the Master Knitting certification from The Knitting Guild Association. I’ve already passed level 1, and have started and stopped level 2 a couple of times. Fortunately, most of the work I’ve already done can be used, but there still is a lot to do. In addition to the nearly endless list of swatches (seaming stockinette, seaming reverse stockinette, calculating stitches to compensate for cable flare, lace patterns, short rows, etc.), there’s a report on the history of knitting (I think I’ve got that covered), 4 book reports and 3 projects. One is color work, one an argyle sock, and the last a knitted vest demonstrating seaming and finishing techniques. I’m looking for a volunteer among my smallest friends since it only has to fit someone — not necessarily me. What makes it really uninteresting to knit is that it needs to be plain and worked in a light color. It’s not something that anyone probably would want to wear. Another knitter at this level commented that we should think of the vest as just a giant swatch rather than a garment. I think I can live with that.
Bruce and I are in the middle of installing new computer hardware. My iMac started giving me real fits recently, refusing to reboot and hanging up on all kinds of actions. I was living in fear of losing data, so did a backup over a couple of days to make sure that I had everything in more than one location. Bruce was even further behind in technology than me, with his computer refusing to recognize more recent technology. We both were getting tired of seeing “this application cannot be opened. Please update your operating system.” Well, that was easier said than done as we’d tapped out out capacity.
My apologies to those of you who regularly follow my blog. I know I haven’t been posting much over the past few months, and I credit my inability to get anything finished for that. I’ve been slowly working on a new project with my designer friend Katarina Segerbrand. We’re not far enough along to have decided exactly where it’s going.
I’m also doing a little bit of research on Shaker knitting (the Shakers were a religious group in the US from the 1770s to the mid-20th century…one or two remaining members of the community still reside in Sabbath Lake, ME). While Shaker craft is most widely known in furniture and architecture, the simple and utilitarian knitting of the Shaker Sisters should not be overlooked. Something I want to look at more closely are a group of knitted rugs. More of that later this month.
