On Aug 16, 2004, at 18:49, W & N Lafferty (Noelene) wrote:
[...] what sort of patterns best suit variegated yarn? Cloth stitch or half stitch diamonds/trails? Big or little spiders? I would think it would have to be very
simple, a "busy" pattern would be lost in variegated.
A *lot* depends on personal preference; what's "messy" in one person's eye is "lovely" in another's... :)
A bit depends on the thread and the variegation - how many colours, and how long between colour changes. Another bit depends on the pattern size (pin spacing); the farther apart the pins, the better the variegations show off.
If I use variegated thread, I aim for the shortest "span" between changes, which seems to be ca 1.5-2", and for not too many contrasting colours - 3 is the limit for me (OTOH, I prefer 3 to 2). But my pins are spaced 2-3mm apart ("Mostly Milanese" in 50/2 or 80/2 cotton being my lace of choice). With Torchon, and pins spaced more widely, you could use thread with longer "span" and still have something very pretty.
I use variegated thread *only* as workers - either in cloth or half stitch - with all passives the same colour (complementing or contrasting). And, preferably, in fairly wide swaths. That's where the variegation shows off to the best effect (IMO). Variegated thread (*again*: IMO) is wasted on passives, especially on the footside passives, which are the "couch potatoes" of lace, and don't move much, except down. The colour changes happen too seldom, and are too abrupt, even if you make sure to hang in the pairs at differing points of the colour-changing cycle. But, workers *do* look nice, even if I have to hang in an extra pair (or thread)
All colour mixtures (several colours of passives/workers) take away a bit of focus from the *pattern*; variegated thread does it "in spades"... :)
I've only ever worked with variegated thread which had *different colours*; in the thickness/span-length I need, I haven't, so far, come accross a thread which moves between different shades (tones?) of the same colour. That might make a difference, and I could imagine it being used for both workers and passives. Or, perhaps, for passives only, with workers a solid colour? And, *definitely*, the edge passives a solid colour (darkest shade of the variegated, probably)...
--- Tamara P Duvall http://lorien.emufarm.org/~tpd Lexington, Virginia, USA (Formerly of Warsaw, Poland) Healthy US through The No-CARB Diet: no C-heney, no A-shcroft, no R-umsfeld, no B-ush.
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