Mixing colours

When I was at Black Sheep Wools recently, one of their lovely staff showed me a new yarn from Wendy called Evolution.  Made up of 4 ends the colours gradually change one strand at a time.  There is also a German company called 100 Farbspiele that offers more unusual colourways.

I was quite intrigued but Evolution is a cotton blend and I’m not keen on knitting with cotton.  This set me thinking about how I could create my own version of this yarn.  I am a huge fan of the webshop Colourmart, where you can buy yarn on the cone in the most luxurious blends so I spent a happy hour putting together colour combinations.  I would love to have worked only in cashmere but until I am sure I can make this technique work I decided to limit myself to laceweight merino yarn and chose 3 lovely shades to try.

I had to sit down in a dark room to work out the maths – I thought I’d share my little chart with you.

Each cone has 1300 metres on so this was the best combination to use up most of the yarn. I used a fishing line counter to measure the meterage and wound the yarn off in to cakes.

My gradient will start with the taupe, go through the teal to the blackcurrant.

To combine the yarns I used wooden knitting needles threaded through a box and a ball winder.Then simply gather up four ends of you first colour and change as each cake runs out.

I am very happy with the result and am going to knit Xanadu by Kitman Figueroa – her designs are always such a pleasure to knit.  The designer has used a 4 ply and according to my measurements this new yarn is coming up as nearer a dk so I will need to swatch and  hope that I have enough yarn. Wish me luck!