How to Make Your Own Ombre in a Knitting Project

An easy way to change the look of a knitting project is to knit stripes instead of working in a solid color, and one fun way to make stripes is to use an ombre palette.

Ombre simply means graduated colors, so you might use, say, several different shades of blue in a project (I did this on a pair of mitts in my latest book).

If you’re not sure how to make your own ombre, Red Heart has some great tips on its blog. The sample swatches show crochet, but it works the same in knitting.

The post lays out several options for making color choices and combining them in a project, whether you do solid stripes like I did on my project or work with several strands of yarn at once and change out colors one at a time for a more blended effect. Either way, making a project ombre is a lot of fun.

Have you ever knit an ombre pattern before? I’d love to hear about it!

Looking for more Ombre Knitting patterns? Check these out on Etsy.

[Photo via Red Heart.]

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Santa and Saint Nicholas generally get all the good press, but Central European kids know you don’t want to just be good so you get presents from St. Nicholas; you also want to avoid the ire of Krampus. (He’s depicted as a human-like figure with horns and usually hairy or furry who gives birch rods instead of gifts to kids who are bad.)

If you’re the type to embrace the naughty side (or you just want to scare the children into good behavior over the holidays), maybe you’ll want to knit a Krampus sweater.

This one, from Sofie Amalie Laulund, is a top down circular yoke sweater with Krampus faces at the top and cavorting Krampuses further down the body, with some traditional Scandinavian snowflakes thrown in for fun.

Because of the large motifs there’s not a lot of room for adjusting the fit, but it is available in five sizes (the Ravelry page doesn’t say what the sizing is, and it says its worked with no ease but the photo looks like the sweater has a bit of positive ease, so if you decide to make this one just check the measurements and your own comfort level for ease when picking a size).

It also uses five colors, but there’s very little red and brown so you can probably use scrap yarn for those parts. It calls for DK weight yarn. You’ll want a background color that helps the creatures stand out. You could also work the snowflake bands in different colors if you want to mix it up.

The pattern is available in both English and Danish, and you can find it on Ravelry. This is the designer’s first pattern, which kudos to them because it’s such an ambitious (and fun!) project I’m happy to add to my collection of whimsy-filled knits.

[Photo: Sofie Amalie Laulund]

Comments

Sharelise says
July 3, 2015 at 4:44 pm
I would prefer to buy a skein of yarn already dyed in ombre, rather than having to buy so many different skeins and then having to figure out what to do with all the leftover. Of course, it would depend on what the project is and what kind of effect you want. For a simple scarf, mitts, or dishrag, I would go with a pre-dyed skein.

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