Saturday, November 13, 2010

variegated book: solid thumbs up

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It doesn't take more than a random sampling of  things I've knit to see I have a dangerous attraction to variegated yarns. It's the "oooh pretty" factor in the skein, plus I'm a horribly indecisive shopper. A variegated skein lets you choose all those colors at once.  Even though a great deal of the time I wish the FO were solid. Because, you know,  all those colors.....
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So, when I heard about this book, I thought it would be worth checking out.
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Espeicially when I saw who wrote it. Lorna, from Lorna's Laces. now there's someone who should know what to do to make variegated and hand dyed yarn behave. Although I have to admit I was skeptical. You know what? Loved it. Lorna knows her stuff, and writes about all the various styles of from printed to handpainted. She explains how to guess what the yarns will do when knit up over a certain amount of stitches (really, you can sort of predict the pooling, striping, flashing, splotching? who knew?). I picked the book up to page through it and ended up reading it one end to the other.
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Best part? Many examples of stitch patterns, in color, showing the effect you get with certain styles of multicolored yarns. Easy enough to substitute these in to patterns you love.
Or, say , plan for a red scarf in kettle dyed yarn. That's what I'm doing. For the Red Scarf Project .  But you probably guessed that.
disclaimer: I was given the book  The Knitters Guide to Handdyed and Variegated Yarn by Lorna Miser by PotterCraft to review. But I mean every word of it.
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And, the winner of the KnitCircus subscription is Ptarmigan. She was chosen by my random number generator, when I requested a number between 1 and 42.
It's good to keep a random number generator hanging around.

Ptarmigan, can you email me , ezisusATsnetDOTnet and we'll get you set up? Thanks everyone for your comments.

7 comments:

Mary Lou said...

OK, but you can't keep your son chained to the wall forever.

Ellen Bloom said...

Sounds like a fascinating book, Gale! Yes, we all get caught up in the variegated yarn tangle! It's crazy how the yarn always looks better in the skein than for a garment. I'll be interested in reading this book too! thanks for the review.

Lisa/knitnzu said...

"all those colors at once"... pretty funny!

At first I thought you wrote "random number between 1 & 2" and I thought that was hilarious...

AudKnits said...

Thanks for the post. I'm going to be looking for this book, since you've given it your stamp of approval! I had given up on variegated yarn a few years ago because I could never get a good looking garment out of the stuff. The idea that you can anticipate the pooling has me intrigued!

Sara and Jeff said...

I am really drawn to variegated yarn also! So now you have me wondering - what is that beautiful red variegated yarn for your next red scarf?

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