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]

Next Pattern:

I’ve shared a lot of Christmas stocking knitting patterns over the years (see posts 1, 2, 3 for example) but what if you want to knit a stocking for a non-human member of your family. If you’re looking for Christmas stocking knitting patterns for your cats or dogs, this is the post for you.

These large paw print stockings are perfect for either dogs or cats, so they’re great to knit if you have both. They are worked in the round using DK weight yarn, and the stocking measures about 17 inches/43 cm from the top to the heel. You can get the pattern from nicolaluke.

The K4 Project has a super cute Kitty Christmas stocking pattern, which is worked in worsted weight yarn. They also have a dog version, or you can buy both and get a discount if you have both dogs and cats to knit for. Both projects have two patterns, showing how to work the stockings flat or in the round.

Put your dog into a Christmas scene with this stocking pattern from ifanhourChild. It shows a dog in a dog house in the snow, and has room for the dog’s name at the top. It’s worked flat using worsted weight yarn and the pattern includes charts for many small and medium dog breeds (there’s a separate listing for bigger dogs) so you can stitch a dog that looks like yours.

Annie’s Woolens has both dog and cat stocking knitting patterns that are worked in worsted weight yarn in the round. You can change up the colors to suit your pet if you want, and they come with an alphabet chart for personalization. Or you can stick with holiday colors and buy a kit to make the dog or cat stocking.

Waiting for Santa Paws is a pattern from Kate Agner on Ravelry that would be cute for a dog or a cat. It looks like a leg with a paw print on the bottom part of the foot and more paw prints running around the top of the leg. This is a great option if you don’t want to mess with a heel turn because it doesn’t have a heel, because dogs and cats don’t have heels so why would their stockings?

Book Review – 20 to Knit: Tiny Christmas Toys to Knit

Book Review – Knit Christmas Stockings

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