Ohh No Not the Frog Pond!

I have just met my first challenge with this project and surprise surprise it’s not the lace. Last weekend I decided to work on this dress outside in my garden. I usually only knit this at night in bed. I am on my third pattern repeat and my second ball of yarn, Its about 12 inches long now. As I hold the knitting up to my leg to check for length I notice what? A stripe! A colour change! Mixed dye lot? This is Handmaiden yarn. There are no dye lots or colour ways assigned to skeins because each batch varies, and apparently each skein varies within a batch. Mine was a custom order of a single batch: this is as good as it will get. They do recommend knitting with two skeins at once to minimize colour differences and pooling but this does not always work and I was reluctant to do this when knitting circular lace. I’m not frogging. I will have to figure out a way to work with the colour variations, especially since they are not that obvious when on the skein. My daughter says it just looks like an intentional fade, but I’m, worried about what happens when the next darker skein comes in.

- Either I introduce the next darkest skein immediately after this one is finished, and when it is finished start knitting with the remaining four skeins two at a time.
- or I frog 15 rows back to my life line (four rows above the shade/skein change) and start knitting two skeins at a time.
- Another option is to frog back to the life line and introduce the next darkest skein (I can only identify one) and then continue with the remaining four lighter skeins.

I’m afraid that knitting with two skeins alternating will create a ridge in the circular lace. What I really want to do is just continue knitting one skein at a time and pray that it all looks like a sophisticated fade in and out (fat chance!). The yarn is a semi solid as it is a mix of silk and linen which absorb dye differently.

I have posted a photo of the dress-in-progress below. The colour is not quite dark enough and I think the shade contrast is exaggerated. The “cast on” photo shown in the previous post is closer to the actual colour. Neither of the photos conveys the sheen and depth of the yarn. I lined up all of the wound skeins from light to dark. Again the photo colour is lighter than the actual colours. I looked at all of the yarn and the knitting in the sunlight, (morning, afternoon and evening) in the shade, in artificial light etc… Sunlight creates the most noticeable contrast and artifical light the least.