The Knitting Fiend

Not about socks! This article is about color patterns that happen when you use variegated yarns.

Before you read ahead, I want you to look at the sock to the left. Look at the structure of the colors. Stop, I know what your eyes and brains are doing: deciding if you think it looks good. Don’t do that!

Instead, first notice the foot. Notice how the colors seem to form bands along the foot. The orangy red bands tend to pile up and form diagonal stripes. Alternating blue-white diagonal bands also appear, as do yellow-white diagonal bands.

I happen to think the diagonals look terrific, but I told you not to make any value judgements — just look at the structure. You are permitted to wonder how I caused this to happen.

Well, I didn’t do it on purpose. I used Taiga’s Country, which is a variegated. The individual runs of color results in runs about 8 to 12 stitches long (it depends on the color.) It also turns out that at the gauge I used for my sock, the full color sequence repeats approximately every 84 stitches. It also just so happens that the orange-red appears twice in the full sequence, and happens to repeat every 42 stitches or so. (I know this because I counted; I counted so I could tell you.)

The strong red-orange diagonal bands formed because the foot of my sock has 40 stitches. When knitting, a red streak would start at some point in the round. I’d knit a full round (40 stitches) and then the red streak would start again, of average, two stitches later. (That is 40 + 2 stitches later). So, as I knit upward, on average the red shifted a bit to the left , forming a diagonal.

The edge of the lines is somewhat jagged; this happens for at least three reasons. The primary reason is: while the full color sequence is about 80 stitches, the two red bands aren’t exactly 42 stitches apart. It’s more as though one streak starts on Stitch 0, the next on stitch 38, the next starts 44 stitches later (note 44 + 38 = 82– the full repeat length.) (The other two reasons would be inconsistency in my gauge and slight inconsistencies in Taiga’s dyeing process. I’m an engineer, and I know that while machines can be very consistent, they are never, ever perfect.)

Now I want you to think a bit. What if my socks has required 42 stitches? What would the bands of color look like.

Well, in that case, the red would have repeated at almost exactly the same point in the round each time. I might have created nearly vertical bands of color– but with jagged edges. (That would be pretty neat!) If my socks has required 44 stitches? The diagonals would lean the other way.

I bet you are now saying: “That’s cool! I bet there is a word for this.” Yes, the word is called “Flashing”. Flashing can be pretty neat; it can also be dreadful. It all depends on where the flashing occurs and how etc.

But, the one aggravating thing about flashing is this: It’s hard to plan on and control. If I’d knit socks my size with 40 stitches around, and you decided to imitate– but increased to 42 stitches to match your foot size, the sock pattern would be different!

Each of us would have unique socks. Is that good or bad? Well, we can each have our own opinion about that. Here’s mine: It’s best if the knitter knows that this is likely to happens and picks yarn and patterns accordingly.

Let’s look at the rest of the sock. Did I create a repeating pattern on the leg? Well, sort of. It’s not as distictive as the repeating pattern on the foot. But you can see the red/blue stripes sort of form a C shape over the calf.

Remember, this is a shaped sock. So, when I worked the leg, I increased 2 stitches every other round. So, even though the color sequence of the yarn repeats ever 84 stitches or so, and even though some groups of colors repeat at over even shorter number of stitch repeats, I never get any and extrememly striking pileup of repeating colors, but I got some sort of repeating pattern.

Is that good? Or Bad? You decide.

As for me, I like my sock. I like the stable repetition at the foot, and the sudden more random veering at the top.

And, since I like to blog, I thought it might be useful to point out what happend and provide a cursory explanation. I also want to emphasize: what you are seeing happens when the yarn has “short” color runs — meaning the colors change several times before you finish a round.

Different weird patterns happens with variegated yarns with “long” color runs. Since I don’t have an example, I won’t talk about those yet. Still, I think just looking at my sock, you can decide if you want to use a variegated yarn for your socks, hats or any other item.

Unpredictable can be fun, or it can be frustrating. You are now forwarned. And you know what they say “Forwarned is forarmed” (might it also be for-calfed?) [ Groan. ]