How to ‘read’ a skein of yarn

One of the most common questions I’m asked is “What will this skein look like knitted up?”

Whilst it would be amazing to have samples of every colourway, this just isn’t practicable. It’s not even just the time it would take, there’s the expense and also crucially, hand dyed yarn is so variable from skein to skein it might be misleading. We need to factor in so many things like needle size, number of stitches, tension and the pattern.

The best way to tell how it will look is to open it up. I have no issue with this at all at shows or in the workshop.

Obviously online, you can’t do that so this is one of the reasons I photograph the yarn with the twisted skein in the centre and then the opened out skein in the background. This will give you a good idea of how repetitive the sections of colour are.

The yarn comes ready skeined in one continuous loop. If I lay the skein out flat on the table top like in the photos below or in the pan, then dye will hit a particular section of this circle and that colour will repeat throughout your work every time you come to that section of the loop.

How long or short these repeats are are a good indication of how the yarn will look once it has been knitted or crocheted and how the colours play out together. This can result in colour pooling which I explain more fully below.

Here are some pictures of some hand painted skeins of yarn at a dye workshop from a couple of years ago where we blended colours together on the table top and then steam set the yarn afterwards.

Every dyer uses different techniques and I tend to specifically aim for highly variegated, non pooling yarns, I try to twist and squish my skeins in the pan so that different sections of the skein are exposed to the dye stock and speckles meaning the resultant yarn will create a more mottled blended effect. The pictures below show a variegated speckled yarn called ‘Arctic.’

It doesn’t just matter where the colour appears in the skein though, you also need to factor in the type of knitting or crochet you are working on and how many stitches you have cast on. Yarn will look different depending on the stitch count and if it is a plain piece of stocking stitch or an intricate lace pattern. Crochet will also result in very different effects. In crochet the yarn is being formed into stitches vertically as well as horizontally and you can see in this granny square below, just how differently it behaves in this festive colour block skein called ‘Sleeps Before Christmas.’

I tend to dye highly variegated yarns in an attempt to avoid colour pooling. This is where blocks of repeated colour stack up on top of each other creating a ‘flash’ in your work. The Geode Cowl by Expression Fibre Arts is a great example of this.
Planned pooling can be a really fun technique with great effect like in this hat knitted by @festoonerie on Instagram using a skein of Unicorn…

In this particular skein, a block of rainbow colours is applied to one section of the skein. You can see it in the open skein here.

This results in a pop of rainbow every so often in your work. Here is the same yarn in an adapted So Faded sweater I made for my daughter. You can see that these ‘rainbows’ are distributed throughout the garment. However, have a look at the sleeves and you can see that reducing the number of stitches really affects how these colours stack up.

So pattern and number of stitches are really important! Colour pooling will look way more obvious in plain stocking stitch than it will in lace or slip stitches. You can help distribute any pooling of colour and blend in variations between skeins by alternating skeins every few rows. There’s a video of how I do this using helical knitting on my you tube channel. The pattern choice is important too - One fantastic pattern for highly variegated yarn is the First Footing Cowl designed by Maddie Harvey. A combination of slipped and wrapped stitches as well as yarn overs help to distribute the colour.

To sum up I thought it might be useful to have pictures of different dye effects and what they can be good for. Remember you can now filter the yarn on the website by yarn effect to find the right yarn for your project.

Semi Solid is the name given to hand dyed yarn in only one colour. It will never be truly solid like you get with commercial yarns. There might be slight variation in tones but there shouldn’t be too many differences within a skein. The different tones you get will be due to the depth of strength of the dye and how quickly the dye is absorbed by the yarn. For example, the very first section dropped into a hot pan of dye stock may be darker than the rest (this can be controlled to a certain extent but that’s probably for another blog post!) These semi solid yarns are brilliant for colourwork. This colourway is called ‘Ink Blot’.

Tonal is where various tones from the same colour grouping are applied to a skein. I particularly like to dye these and often add the odd speckle of the same colour to add interest to the yarn. I just love getting a bit of variation through my knitting. These are great for lace work as they allow the pattern to shine and don’t detract too much from the design. This is the colourway ‘Haddo’.

Variegated yarn is probably my signature style, although this sample in the colourway ‘Universe’ was actually dyed by my eldest son! I love to apply dye randomly and layer up various colours together to create something really exciting for you to work with. Sometimes these look great as a solo colour in a project or faded into other colours but you can always tone these down a little by striping them with a semi solid like in the Confetti Sweater. As I mentioned above, you should look at any blocks of colour in variegated yarns and look at their length to try and understand how this will work in your chosen pattern.

Speckled yarn is simply a yarn with added specks of dye throughout them. This one is probably a combination of variegated with speckles. It was one of the yarns in last years advent called ‘Crannachan’. Sometimes this can look amazing on a simple skein like Arctic at the beginning of this post or lots of different coloured speckles like that in Citrus Pine. I usually apply the speckles at the end of my dyeing process and it always amazes me how much they can lift a colour and change the skein. It take a bit of skill to not let these ‘bleed’ and disperse through the yarn but with practice they can transform a hand dyed skein.

I know that this is a lot of information to take in, and I hope I haven’t confused you further! I actually recorded a live video a few weeks ago on Facebook (20th March) which explains lots of this visually, so you might want to watch it too.

I really want to add though that I am always happy to help with pairing up yarn with a pattern. You’ll find lots of inspiration pics on my social media and I will always be very honest if i think a yarn just isn’t quite right for that project. I have learnt the hard way!!!!

Cookston Crafts is based in rural Aberdeenshire and is a real haven for craft lovers. Claire creates luxury hand dyed yarns inspired by the beautiful Scottish landscape.

Claire also teaches workshops from a beautiful converted steading and will give you a warm welcome whether you are there for a class or just to browse the yarn.

Claire is passionate about sharing her love of all things crafty and is delighted to give help and advice so you have the confidence and inspiration to create your own unique project.