You may remember a couple weeks ago I bought some What We Do In The Shadows yarn, which I tried unsuccessfully to make into a bat cowl. I’ve been thinking since then that maybe that yarn would best be used for some kind of planned pooling project.
For non-knitters, planned pooling is when you take yarn with a predictable dye pattern and deliberately knit it in such a way that stripes or even plaid-like patterns show up in the fabric. Doing this does require a little pre-work though. So I unwound the yarn a bit so I could identify the dye pattern.
So as it turns out, basically its half ectoplasm green and half purple/black. There’s a light patch inside the purple black area, and there’s a little blop of purple within the green, but for reasons of simplicity, I decided to just go with half and half. The next step then is to cast on some stitches using a different yarn (again to keep things simple – casting on takes more yarn than regular stitches) and see how many stitches you have of each color.
You knit through a couple rounds of the dye pattern and then figure out your average. The average for this yarn was 34 stitches of purple and 34 stitches of green, for a 68 stitch dye pattern repeat. Then you just plug your numbers into www.plannedpooling.com and start to play around with stitch patterns. The number of stitches you cast on makes a huge difference in what your pattern looks like, as does whether you are knitting flat or in the round.
For example, if I knit a double repeat of my dye pattern (136 stitches) in the round, I get this:
If I knit the same number of stitches flat, I get this
And if I knit 135 stitches in a row flat – one stitch less than the last one, I get this!
One other thing to consider is that the stripes or diamond aren’t going to be as crisp as in the generated image – this is hand-dyed yarn, so a bit a wobbliness is part of the charm. I did knit a little test swatch and tried out adding a stitch or removing one. Here’s what I wound up with
Pretty cool! So now that I have my stitch repeats, I just have to figure out what I’m going to do. I’m leaning toward a plaid look pattern. Also, I’m not a huge fan of long thin cowls, so I will probably cast on a lot of stitches and knit until I run out, then just sew the sides together. But we shall see 🙂
Quite A Yarn 
That is looking very cool! I suspect I will be using that website soon to play around with some planned pooling of my own. Thanks for linking it.
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You are very welcome – enjoy! It is a very cool site 🙂
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Oh my gosh, that is really cool! Thank you for sharing. I loved my planned pooling scarf, but I had no idea how to do it with other yarns.
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Thank you! Your scarf is what got me thinking about it 🙂 I know there are other ways of figuring out, but this is the way that makes the most sense to me. And the website is really cool!
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I’ve never heard of planned pooling or that software, so thanks for sharing. Socks, wrist warmers, phone cosy?
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There are a lot of options for sure!
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Wow! I can’t believe one stitch can make such a difference! Knitting really is magic.
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Yes it is!
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That looks fantastic!! I have seen projects with planned pooling but I’ve never tried it. Thanks for sharing the web site:)
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It is a really nifty knitting trick 🙂 You are very welcome!
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Wow, this is more complicated than I would have expected! I really like what you ended up with. It’ll make a beautiful…whatever you make!
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Figuring out the repeat is definitely the most involved part. LOL – I hope so!
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Wow! I just learned a lot about planned pooling. Thank you!
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You are welcome! 🙂
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That is sooo cool!! Hm, I am not sure I really have any yarns with long color changes, will have to think on that when I get my knitting mojo back!
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Shorter color changes work too, as long as they are regular-ish. It’s fun – give it a try!
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Planned pooling is cool, but it’s pretty mindful knitting because your gauge has to be pretty consistent! I don’t usually look at my knitting while I’m knitting. But pooling on purpose is fun.
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Yes, true! You can get fun effects from it, but you definitely have to pay attention as you go 🙂
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