Earlier in the year when I was trying to decide what to make for my fade project, I thought about making a shawl using Malabrigo Dos Tierras but I just couldn’t get the fade to fade the way I thought it should I had ordered 8 or 10 different colors, single skeins, of Dos Tierras before deciding that wasn’t going to work. The Lettuce color just jumped into my head and I wanted a cardigan out of it. I ordered more of it.
A few weeks ago, a friend shared a cardigan, Mariechen, that she had made using Dos Tierras. The stitch definition was great and I knew I probably almost enough of the Lettuce color to make a sweater but I ordered three more skeins knowing I might not have enough with 7 skeins by the time I swatched.
The photo above shows the value in buying all of the needed yarn at the same time. That’s 10 skeins of Malabrigo Dos Tierras in Lettuce.
Looking at these skeins in grayscale, you can can see that I would end up with a striped sweater if I wasn’t very careful. Malabrigo is one of the worst for having non-matching skeins. I don’t know that the shops even check dye lots because there’s often quite a bit of variation in the same dye lot. Mostly they just compare the yarn they have and if it’s not a great match, they let us know and we can decide if we want the yarn or not.
It definitely isn’t the shop’s fault. All of this came from Eat, Sleep, Knit and they are so good about letting us know if the skeins don’t match. I ordered six skeins the first time, then one, then three so I have 10 skeins, or 2,100 yards. I need about 1,500 for the sweater.
These five are all the same dye lot and almost certainly part of the first 6 that I ordered.
These three are the same dye lot and quite a bit lighter than the first six..
These two are each a different dye lot.
When using this type of dyed yarn, the color can vary greatly from the end of the skein to the beginning of the skein so it’s always a good idea to alternate skeins (use one skein for a row or two and then switch to another skein). That’s about the only way to hope to not get obvious striping.
It’s funny because looking at the various dye lots separately, they all look the same but lay them all out together and there’s a very obvious difference.
This is also why, when I buy a certain number of skeins for a sweater (even though I may not have a pattern in mind), I don’t want to use one skein for another project because even if I could get the same color, it likely wouldn’t match the others and by breaking up the “lot”, I could be making the remaining 6 or 7 skeins, depending on the weight, yardage and pattern I might want to make pretty much not usable.
Who knew just getting the yarn together for a sweater would be so hard? 🙂 It really isn’t hard. I love doing the planning and scheming!
Nelle Coursey says
Even without the gray scale you can tell the difference in the colors. But with the gray scale it looks like none of them match!!
Susan Nixon says
I can hardly tell the difference. Can’t you do the pattern as a fade from lightest to darkest?