Good morning and happy Friday to you! Today I want to talk to you about planned pooling and some colorways I designed specifically with that technique in mind. I also want to show you some new mini-skein sets.
Planned Pooling
The first time I heard of planned pooling was probably 7 years ago when my daughter’s dance teacher–an avid crocheter–mentioned this great technique. I thought it sounded interesting, but I didn’t look any further at the time.
Within the last couple years, though, I started to see more and more of these really interesting crochet and knitting projects, and I had a few customers mention that they were working on planned pooling project. In order to learn more, I ordered Laura Bryant’s book, Artful Color, Mindful Knits: The Definitive Guide to Working with Hand-Dyed Yarn. It’s a fantastic book with lots of information about how different colorways work up and how to get them to do just what you want. Laura Bryant is the owner of Prism Yarn and one of the early pioneers of the hand-dyed yarn movement.
One of the things that’s really great about planned pooling is that it works equally well with knitting and crochet, and Laura Bryant shows quite a few crochet examples in her book too. Meanwhile, though, Marly Bird, does a lot with planned pooling and crochet. Here is a link to her tutorials on planned pooling. Another great resource is the website, www.plannedpooling.com, where you can play around with designs digitally before trying them out with your yarn. It’s amazing how much difference one stitch can make!
The basic idea is to make a swatch and figure out the number of stitches it takes to go all the way around the hank and back to the first colorway again. That’s what Laura Bryant calls your magic number, and it will depend on your tension, needle size, and the yarn itself. In her book, she shows several different ways to derive that number.
That magic number is how many stitches you’ll want to use per row to get the colors to stack on top of each other. You’ll get an argyle if it’s off from the magic number by just a stitch or two per row because that gives the colors a chance to meander a little bit, and it makes beautiful patterns. If it’s off a little bit more, you’ll get what Laura Bryant calls a “meander,” which is a little more informal but still with beautiful color combinations.
Of course the next step with my new-found knowledge was to dye up some yarn specifically with planned pooling in mind. I created three new colorways that were intentionally brighter than my typical colorways because there needs to be some good contrast for argyles especially. Each one has three colors plus the beautiful little colors that appear where two colors meet. I dyed these on Sock Perfection and Squoosh DK.
The first colorway is called Bejeweled because the colors look like Amethysts, Emeralds, and Sapphires. Here it is:
Here is a hat I knit with Bejeweled without worrying about planned pooling:
Here is a knitting sample I have been making using a stitch count that is off by two from my magic number:
Here are the two are side by side so you can see the difference:
The second new colorway I made with planned pooling in mind is called Sedona Sunset. When we lived in Arizona, we lived in a small town called Cottonwood, and we were able to see the red rocks of Sedona from our front porch off in the distance to the west. That meant we had these amazing, brilliant sunsets that Arizona is famous for over the ever-changing Sedona red rocks. I’m glad to be back in Texas, but that’s one of the things I definitely miss about Arizona!
I have not had the time to make planned pooling samples for this colorway, but I did make a hat using my Addi without planned pooling just to give you an idea of how the colorway works up ordinarily. Here’s a closeup:
…and here’s the whole hat:
The third and final colorway is probably my favorite. It’s called Neon Lights. When I make my Beautiful Universe colorway, there’s the little section where Margarita and No Shrinking Violet meet, and it makes this sort of reddish color that I have no name for but absolutely love. That’s why I chose to put those two colorways together along with Renaissance Blue, and it is kind of stunningly bright. Here’s the yarn:
Here is a hat I made with Neon Lights in the ordinary way without planned pooling as a sample:
Here’s a closeup of the Neon Lights hat:
I am actually working on a planned pooling sample for Neon Lights that I had hoped to have ready for you today, but it’s really not far enough along to be able to show you unfortunately. I’ll try to post it on Instagram and Facebook as soon as I have it done.
One other fascinating technique for planned pooling that I want to mention is the work of designer Dawn Barker of Chasing Rabbits. She has a pattern called Float where you take yarn with a main color that takes up at least three quarters of the skein and then another color or colors for the other quarter. The main color becomes the background, and the smaller section becomes little flowers on the background. It’s really beautiful.
That’s just one of several patterns she has created with the same general idea, but it occurred to me that my colorway, A Light in Dark Places, would work beautifully for this type of planned pooling pattern. I’m going to be working up some new colorways with this type of planned pooling in mind.
Meanwhile, I have many more colorways that would work well for planned pooling of the Laura Bryant/Mary Bird type.
Colorway Types
With that in mind, I did something new to the Purple Lamb website yesterday. I made a new way to search by colorway type, so look for the link on the left that says “Yarn – Shop by Colorway Type.” I organized all the colorways in three categories there:
All planned pooling colorways are block variegated, meaning that they have specific color sections that are more than a few inches long. The ones with 3 to 5 longer color sections are more likely to pool than those with lots more color sections.
Splashed and Speckled colorways are variegated too, but they don’t have specific chunks of color, so they are not likely to pool, which is usually a good thing unless you are doing planned pooling.
Semi-Solid and Tonal colorways probably don’t need any explanation.
There’s definitely some cross-over among these. For example, Purple Delight is both a tonal colorway because it has only shades of purple, but it’s also a Splashed and Speckled colorway because it has both splashes of color and speckles. Here it is on Squiggle Sock:
I would love to hear from you about planned pooling. Is this a technique you have tried? If so, did you like it? If not, is it something you are interested in trying? Above all, how can I help?
If you have done planned pooling projects, I would love to see some photos so I can share them with everyone and inspire all of us!
Mini-Skein Sets
When I was dyeing up the Eight Days of Easter colorways, I made some extra skeins to turn into mini-skein sets, but I wanted to wait to introduce them until everyone who got an Eight Days of Easter kit had a chance to open their yarn Easter eggs, so I’m doing it now. I dyed these on a lovely base called Silken Sock. It’s made of 80% superwash merino and 20% silk, and each mini skein has 80 yards.
Here are the five different colorway combinations:
I don’t have a ton of these–somewhere between one and five sets per colorway combination–but you can see them all in the Kits and Sets section of my shop.
On a Personal Note…
Our son is back from his trip to all the California missions. I think I mentioned last week that he and his friends walked just over 1000 miles. What I didn’t know then is that they were only the 25th, 26th, and 27th people to ever complete all the missions at once, and most of the others were picked up at the end of the day to go to comfy hotels whereas these intrepid young people mostly camped along the way. Also, our daughter who is in Rome will be back next week!!! I can’t wait to see her, but I have to hurry up and finish a project I’m working on as a birthday present. I’ll show to you after she sees it just in case she happens to see this week’s newsletter as a break from her finals for the semester.
Have a beautiful weekend, and stay well!