Letters
The Quest for a Great Mood
Dear Kay,
In our previous episode, a chorus of knitters suggested swatching the yarn combinations I’m mulling for my Mood Cardigan.
I am ON IT.
If you’re just joining us, Jeanette Sloan’s Mood Cardigan (quickly becoming a favorite) calls for two laceweight yarns to be held together. Or one fingering weight yarn held single.
Have you noticed all the marling and combining going on these days? It’s sweeping the knitting world. Everybody’s doing it! I’m climbing onto this bandwagon with a tote bag of yarn and an open mind.
In the MDK Shop
The questions for me: What fiber combination creates the fabric that I most desire for my Mood Cardigan?
And what color combination is The One?
I didn’t realize how totally into this I was going to get. Properly into it. Stay with me. World peace depends on how this thing turns out.
The Candidates
Lustrous Fyberspates Gleem Lace, fluffy Fyberspates Cumulus.
The Combos
I started with the combination I thought I was going to love the most.
Gleem LACE Plum Imps + Cumulus Magenta
Cool, but what about my Gleem Lace? Magenta is hogging the microphone.
Maybe a contrasting color will let my beloved Plum Imps shine.
GLEEM LACE Plum Imps + CUMULUS GlOAming
Or not. Holy smoky, this is not what I thought it would be. I thought it would be elegant and understated and fancy. But no. If this were a Stephen King novel, it would be The Gloaming. Dim, grim, and mousy. (No offense, mice—you’re beautiful.)
Brainstorm: what if I abandon Gleem Lace altogether and go with a single strand of Cumulus, that airy wonder yarn?
Cumulus Magenta, single strand
Gorgeous. A beautiful shawl could come of this, but for a garment like the Mood Cardigan, I crave more more weight and drape.
I circled back to Gleem Lace. I love Gleem Lace. What about doubling Gleem Lace?
Gleem Lace Plum Imps, doubled
I really love this, the slink and drape of it. And the luster! But I have a crush on Cumulus at this point.
What about a deeper Cumulus color? Maybe Magenta just didn’t want to hang out with Plum Imps. Let’s try another Cumulus.
Gleem Lace Plum Imps + Cumulus Plum
Oh. Wow. This is interesting. I love magenta (where would offset printing be without it?), but that magenta is ZINGO. This slightly deeper shade is something I’m more likely to imagine in my closet. And the little flickles of Gleem Lace come and go. I think this will look good as a swath of modern lace. It’s going to be a supersnuggly cocoon to get me through the end of the year.
By the way, Cumulus is alpaca fluffy, not mohair fluffy. It does not make me itchy.
(And a note: my pix were taken on the gloomiest rainy day Nashville has had in a while. The colors are truest in the MDK Shop images for Cumulus and Gleem Lace.)
Conclusion
Yarns do all sorts of wacky things when paired together. The stitch pattern, the needle size, the size of the project—all affect how two yarns will look when knitted together. One yarn can overtake the other. One color can dominate. Seeing what happened with these yarns was very surprising to me.
Come Knit Up a Good Mood with Us
Our knitalong for Field Guide No. 15: Open is just starting—plenty of time to jump in and start scheming. If you’re on Instagram, our hashtag is #MDKOpenKAL. Tag your photos with the hashtag and we’ll share them in our posts and stories. (And don’t forget to share any MDK projects with the hashtag #mymdk, so we can freshen up the gallery of FOs on our homepage.)
And of course, we’ll be knitting and carrying on together in the MDK Lounge. Swatching encouraged.
Love,
Ann
PS In case you need some proof of the Mighty Redemptive Power of Blocking, here’s the Before:
And the After:
It all relaxes in a beautiful way.
Fascinating. So what becomes of the swatch?
My immediate thought: that swatch must become a scarf.
It makes an interesting scarf!?
I love the definition in plum imps doubled but the plum imps and cumulus plum looks snuggly and really pretty. Make both 🙂
I never thought I would see magenta swatching by you, Ann. I love it always! Cool to see the options; love your choice; wish I could squish it!
What stitch were you using?
I started a Stephen West, Stephen B kal shawl while sick. My sickness, unfortunately morphed into pneumonia. It was dreadful and I had just accepted a long term substitute teacher assignment. I read the pattern , incorrectly, as saying choose up to 10 colors.
No, it suggested 10 different yarns. It is a fo and I call it my wild child shawl lol!
I love mixing yarns and colors in my knitting. I combined yarns before it was a ” big thing”. When I know how to, I will post a picture. People either love or hate it.
Thank you for your 1st read in the morning, the best!
I’m glad to hear cumulus is not itchy. Mohair makes me itch just thinking about it!
They’re all interesting and lovely in their own way but me I would go for the Gleem lace held double for the sweater.
Wow! A great lesson that will have me swatching for life!!
I am another swatching convert after seeing these beautiful yarns in action and in combination. You never know until you try.
Love seeing this kind of just sitting down and seeing what happens.
Wow, that is a gorgeous shawl you ended up with.
Thank you. I love the way you unfolded your saga. And like you, as soon as I scrolled down to the final picture, I uttered “wow!”. –So rich and deep. It will be beautiful.
Hi Ann, what size needle are you using?
That’s a size 8. It’s the size specified in the Mood Cardigan pattern.
Love your swatches. You must of photographed them on Sunday.
I am impressed! Not only did you swatch, but you’ve provided material for at least a couple columns by your contributors!
So fun to see these experiments! Thank you! I’m doing Mood in Rustic Fingering in Oliver and just love the lace fabric.
Wow. I was most surprised by how aggressive that little fuzzy yarn is. It can really smother the lace yarn if it’s the wrong color! Thank you for swatching, this was fun to see.
Holy moly, you’re a swatching machine, Ann! I love the intentionality you’ve got going here. I usually do this by accident: I start a project, and start over, and start over again.
That Gleem Lace doubled made my heart go pitty pat, in the picture. But I think you’re right about the deeper shade with the magenta.
I bought the Field Guide ebook, but didn’t plan to knit anything right now. Your little swatch escapade is seriously tempting me. And you’ve done the swatching for me! Hmmmmm.
Swatches like these show how it can be interesting and even exciting to swatch. There is so much to discover! By the way, the swatch would make a beautiful scarf to wear with your cardigan!
I gotta say, I’m loving the plum imps and the gloaming together! The bright pinks peeking out through the mist makes me happy. It’s like a garden designed so that you can’t see all of it at once. There’s something else just around that corner…
I actually like colors like they are. Do a multicolored mood Cardigan!
Your swatch has become a gorgeous wrap – one to wear with your mood cardigan!
Boy, that magenta/pink color family has really struck a nerve with all of us. Sometimes the best combos come by accident. In this case a beautiful scarf/cowl/wrap occurred by accident! Hope you can hold onto it as is and not have to cannibalize it to complete your Mood! Also my accidental marl (which occurrred because they just happened to be sitting together one day in my stash) includes a mohair-y KSH-y yarn. Will that make me itch????
yaaaaaaaaaas. very satisfying. thank you for doing this, and for posting it. also, how the $&%@ do you knit so fast? it would have taken me three weeks to swatch that far. i think.
Oh, yes, and, side note as others are noting – does this mean that the beloved challenge of the Birch shawl and all the other things that made so many of us obsess over kid silk haze… were itchy?
Haha!! I noticed that you slipped in the swatch… and the blocking. Did you clean out your dryer with your Tunisian crochet hook? ❤