Buh-Bye Now

Do you see what I mean about this yarn? The colors work together so much better when they're not pooling.

I haven't decided what to do about this yarn. Thanks so much for all the great suggestions. Changing the gauge would also change the fabric density (and would therefore change the durability and wearability of the socks), so I don't think that would work in the long run, even if it would certainly disrupt the color pattern.

But a pattern, that might do the trick. With the help of ravelry, I've identified several patterns that might work better. Anything that breaks the tendency to pool the colors would do it. At the moment, I'm leaning toward entrelac of some kind. Either that, or I might bag the idea of socks altogether and do a scarf of some type.

Truth, though? What I really want is a finished fabric that looks something like the picture above. Because the colors don't pool, the eye sees them a bit differently. File this under "Yet Another Longed-For Impossibility."

For now, we're going to let this yarn rest. I won't bother trying to straighten out the kinks from having knit it, but winding it back onto the ball and ignoring it will help it relax. In other words, I have a great excuse for avoiding a decision on this yarn for a while.

And let's face it. It's not as though I'm hard-up for knitting material. I'll just knit some of my other hundred thousand yards of yarn.

It Looked Good in the Hank

I don't have a picture of this Schaeffer Anne in the skein, and I regret that now. I regret it because, as knit, this yarn looks like an entirely different creature than it did when it was looped and twisted and on the shop shelves. It was mostly steel blue-gray, with a strong shot of rich purple, and just a dash of teal and yellow. Based on the color changes, I suspected it would knit to a purple/gray body with shots of hot color, maybe with a resulting pattern something like this:






















As you can see, though, the Schaeffer Anne doesn't look anything like that. It's barberpoling, which is like a pox on my house in any event. Me and the barberpoles, we don't see so much eye to eye when it comes time to knit the second sock, which never, ever manages to stripe in an acceptable manner.

But the bigger problem in the barberpole is the way the green and yellow come together. Separated, they looked like nice shots of color waking up the darker shades. Together, they make an odd, jarring splash between the purple and the gray. The green takes on a kelly cast, where it's actually more of a hunter-teal shade on its own.

I'm also disappointed with the way the gray is pooling. It's flat and a little dead-looking. The other stripes in the barberpole are shaded and intermingled with at least two tones. The gray is all gray.

Right now, I'm debating whether to keep knitting in the hopes that the pattern will grow on me. Option two would be to rip it, wind it back into skeins, and just overdye it some dark color. Like black. Black would wipe this mess right out of existence, right?

I don't know. Anyone have any better ideas?