Help, I've Run Out of My Yarn!

With the caveat that you really can't make a fiber mistake you can't ultimately conceal, I should talk about color choices. An example of that would be the non-color of white.  Go in your closet and examine all of your white shirts and sweaters and see if  you can find two that are the exact same shade.  Same with black. These are two non-colors that you had better be sure you have lots of the same dye lot before you begin a project.  Can't cheat on these.

But what do you do if you have come to the end of your ball of yarn and you still have a couple of sleeves and a hat to go?  That happened to me last week.  It was a blue jean jacquard sweater, knitted from the top down, so the top of the arms were already in place.  There was nary another ball of it in my stash (odd)? Even the local yarn store didn't turn up anything, so now I had to do a color match.  I found a lighter grey that worked out but not without some cheating.

In this case, because the jacquard pattern was in tones and variations  of the same color, I had a far less difficult time blending.  I will recommend that if you see this problem coming, you rip back so that you have half of the yarn necessary to complete the project and then knit the new yarn every other row.  Might not work well enough if the shades are too far off, but for me and that particular pattern, it worked very well.

This is the same technique you want to use if you buy a "no dye lot" bunch of yarn.  It means nothing matches, but you can blend it far more effectively by knitting one row from one ball and the next from the other.  Hand spun yarns are notorious for having the matching problems.  Maybe it isn't the dye lot, but it will be the thickness so blend by alternating rows.

Another blending trick is to vary the stitch.  In the hat, I used picots. It was crunch time for me because I had used up all my blendable yarn in the sleeves and the hat was on its own.  It was not remotely ever going to look like it was on purpose.  I started with the light grey rib and then alternated two rows of the original yarn and two of the grey.  I tossed in the picot holes on the grey rows to give the eye something else to think about.  I think it all worked out well because my resident yarn critics didn't see the problem until I pointed it out.

Obviously, to avoid the problem of running out of yarn, buy an extra ball.  This, of course, is how out-of-control yarn stashes get started, but that's a whole other subject.  The other thing is to try to calculate how many yards you need to complete your project - most patterns will say.  Then check the yarn band of your intended yarn and do the math (and buy the extra ball).

If in doubt turn to the idea of on purpose collars, cuffs and ribs in a complementary color.  Add stripes if you must to blend.  Because I do mostly charity baby sweaters, I often have contrasting bodices that pick up the extra striping in the lower part of the sweater.

There is much to be said about color, such as how you actually choose it, but we'll save that for another chat.

Come back soon and hugs to you and your projects too, Pat