Some thoughts about variated yarn

I´m knitting for quiet a while now and my least favourite yarn is variated yarn. Not because I don´t like it, but because it´s so hard to choose a good pattern for the yarn.

Last week some friends and I decided to do a small KAL (knit-along, which means you choose a pattern and all knit this pattern so you can discuss and share progress). We choose "Cameo" a nice enough, easy scarf pattern. I went to my stash and had a look around. What I found was my variated yarn I dyed myself, from last year with easter color. One half was green and one half was red with golden thread (which creates short color repeats - I didn´t realize that at the time). So I choose this yarn.

As I was going to Bremen last week by train this was just perfect (in my mind anyway) so I took the yarn and the pattern with me and started knitting. It went well enough, the pattern was pleasant, the yarn a bit scratchy for my taste, but hey it can always be a present for someone else. But something kept nagging at my mind, whispering that this looked not right and the yarn was not a good choice for the pattern. I ignored these thoughts, because I desperately wanted to knit something again to get my knitting mojo back. And at first the color repeats looked nice. Next day I was travelling back and after one hour I send a picture of the scarf to my friends, because i couldn´t decide what to make of it, the color repeats looked awful now.

Too short to make any sense and it ruined the pattern. My friends confirmed my doubts and I decided to leave the beginning as it was. But I had five more hours to go on the train. So what to do? Sure I could always read, but it bugged me, and I wanted to see if the wool can be used at all. So I choose the only option that really sprang to my mind. Socks! Of course. Socks are perfect for short color repeats. So here they are. Plain old socks. Looking good.

So lesson learned (again I hope), choose a pattern that has a fixed number of stitches (preferably socks, or mitts or maybe a hat) for yarn that has short color repeats.