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]

Not too long ago I did a test knit for another designer that was for a cabled cardigan. It’s really cozy and nice but it just about broke me in a ton of different ways. I couldn’t get gauge, which I suppose is my own problem, but mainly I was somehow both bored and forced to pay attention at the same time.

Because it used the same cable all over, I always had to know what row I was on, but nine out of ten of those rows, nothing in particular was going on. So I couldn’t stop paying attention, but what I needed to attend to was boring.

It may have ruined me for knitting cabled sweaters, but maybe I just need something that’s more engaging. Like this Modern Aran Cardigan pattern from Lion Brand Yarn.

This is a reworking of an old pattern from their archives, and you can tell that form the classic look of the cables and the oversized feel (nothing cropped about this one!). It has allover cables, but like a classic Aran sweater it’s not the same cable, so you’ll have to pay attention to what row you’re on and what cable turns happen for which cables on that row.

Because of this, it’s considered an intermediate knitting pattern, but if you’re comfortable working from multiple charts at once it shouldn’t be a problem for you. There are three different charts and seven different cable moves.

Also because the pattern is so big and boxy there are only two sizes available, with a finished chest measurement of either 49 or 63 inches (that’s 124.5 or 160 cm). It’s up to you to decide how much ease you would like and whether that will work for your body.

The pattern uses worsted weight yarn (and calls for another classic, Lion Brand Fisherman’s Wool). It calls for six buttons and includes pockets to make it extra cozy.

This one looks like a great winter project to make and to wear if you’re up for a bit of a challenge. You can grab the free pattern or buy a kit with the yarn needed direct from Lion Brand Yarn.

[Photo: Lion Brand Yarn]

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