Alternating Skeins When Knitting with Hand-Dyed Yarn

Working with hand-dyed yarn is a lot of fun, and it’s great for us to support independent yarn dyers when we can. But it can sometimes be tricky to use over the course of a full garment because of little differences in how the color appears from skein to skein. Sometimes when you change to working with a new skein of yarn it will be really obvious because the color is just slightly different, or if you’re working with a very colorful yarn sometimes you’ll get color pooling, where one color seems to always land in the same place in your knit fabric.

The best way to deal with these issues before they happen is to knit from two different skeins throughout, also known as alternating skeins. This breaks up the color from one row or round to the next, preventing pooling.

If you’re working with more of a solid or semi-solid color, you can choose to alternate skeins throughout, or just switch colors every round (every other row if you’re working flat) for maybe an inch (2.5 cm) or so when you’re about to run out of yarn so that the colors mix together visually and you don’t get that abrupt stripe.

Alternating skeins isn’t hard, but it can sound tricky if you’ve never tried it before. Elizabeth Smith Knits has a couple of good videos along with some tips on different methods for carrying the yarn up as you go, which I think generally is the part that confuses people, especially newer knitters (no, you do not have to cut the yarn after every row as you alternate skeins).

This is one of those things that sounds like such a little thing but it makes a big difference. If you’ve ever knit a project and had the colors pool in a weird way or gotten that line where you switched colors, you know it’s worth the little extra bit of time it takes to do this. And if you’ve never done that, starting out with this technique when you start working with hand-dyed yarn on larger projects will make your results a lot better without a lot of extra work.

Have you used alternating skeins in a project before? Or failed to and wished you had? I’d love to hear about it!

[Photo: Elizabeth Smith Knits]

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I happen to live in the Northern Hemisphere, but I know we have a lot of Southern Hemisphere friends, too, who are heading into the cooler months as we are warming up. Whichever one of the seasons you’re in, you might want to stitch up this sweet little hood.

This pattern by saskie&co is called snug hood and it uses two colors of yarn to make a close-fitting pixie style hood (almost a balaclava but it doesn’t cover your face, though there is a neck covering portion to keep you a little warmer). You can use the fingering weight wool and mohair held together that are called for in the pattern, or use a single strand of DK weight yarn.

The neck portion and the edging around the face are worked in ribbing in a single color, while the body of the hat includes an allover colorwork flower pattern. The project is worked both flat and in the round and there is colorwork that is knit flat, which means you’ll have to purl in colorwork (which some people don’t like; also, you can’t see what you’re doing as well on the back of the work).

The pattern comes in one size and the colorwork is charted. Testers noted this is a quick and easy project and a great way to learn some new skills (chart reading, working stranded colorwork flat) if you’ve never tried those things before. They noted the hood is cute, comfortable and warm, and a few said it didn’t take as much yarn as the pattern suggests, so bear that in mind if you’re trying to use stash.

Speaking of the pattern notes, check out all the cute color variations in the projects on Ravelry. From pink and red to blue and white to gray and cream, there are lots of great options to think about.

You can buy this pattern on Ravelry.

[Photo: saskie&co]

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