Or as they are more commonly know in
the knitting world, clown barf yarns.You might never have heard that name before, but you know exactly what I mean.
And yet in spite of that name, we all
once in a while fall victim to loving skeins of it. It's worse in the
early years, when those bright colorful skeins look so wonderful and we
are unsure of what color we want.
There are new colors and kinds and weights of clown barf all the time.
They look so pretty in the skein, all the colors in such pretty
harmony. Even seasoned knitters, who have disaster after disaster
with polychromes, are still sometimes suckered into buying another
skein (or two, or three!) every once in a while. If they are not suckered into buying these skeins themselves, the receive gifts of them from well meaning friends, who present them with single skeins of them as gifts.
We love they way the colors line up
in the skein. We keep thinking we'll get those pretty, balanced
pools of color when we knit them up. Then when we do finally take them to the needles, what looked so pretty in
skein—the beautiful ombre, the colorful skein, becomes, in very
short order, a pile of clown barf. YOU know exactly what I mean.
So what to do with those skeins? Toss
them? (Never!) There are solutions. Ravelry has a group, (for
everything) but one especially for these yarns. You can, depending
on the color patterns and how they are printed—knit scarves or hats
that self stripe, or self pattern into something like a argyle type
design.
Sometimes, things work out--but the results often seem more suited to a child garment rather than an adults.(That is one of my darling granddaughter, when she was 6 or so, modeling a Meg Swanson design.--Knit circa 2005)
Another option is to pair with a solid
color. Narrow stripes of polychrome, paired with narrow stripes of a
solid can create a beautiful design. Using polychromes in stranded
knitting can work, too. Though long colors runs that self stripe
are more suited.
Here are some tricks for picking the
solid yarn.
1—the solid yarn should not have any
color in the mix. Sometimes, this means, only white or black are are
available for coordinating solids.
2—the solid yarn should be about the
same color value as the polychrome—Pastels match best with other
pastels, mid tones match best with mid tones, dark colors match best
with dark tones.
3—try for high contrast. A colorway
of red violet/violet/blue violet and peach, is best matches with a
yellow (yellow being the contrasting color to violet) A color way of
blue, blue green, green goes best with a coral (the contrasting color
for blue is orange, for green is red, for blue green, a reddish
orange or coral—which can go pastel, (and still be seen as coral,
or go dark, and be sort of a brick-ish red.)
Other options (and other rules!) can be
found in Margaret Radcliffe's book The Essentials of Color Knitting.
(a treasure trove of ideas!)
Once you have your matching solid, you
have to decide: should the polychrome predominate, or should the
solid? I tend to like the solid to predominate—but that is my
taste and choice.
What do you think? A good use, or not?
More on this bit of knitting tomorrow.
