So, I’m still talking about that strange knitting project of mine – the adventure began here and continued here. I know you’re impatient to see how it looks knitted up, so without further ado, here’s the work in progress:This is the back of the raglan sleeved cardigan I’ll knit from the reclaimed yarn. I did a small gauge swatch, calculated my gauge per inch, then multiplied it by width I wanted the finished back to be. Then I cast on that many stitches in the mauvey colourway and knit 6 rows of seed stitch – that’s in blue.

The fair isle design is from a pattern by Eunny Jang called the Venezia Pullover. Just as you might suspect, this pattern is for a pullover, which isn’t what I wanted to knit. But I’ve always liked the curves of the fair isle pattern. The pattern as written uses a number of different colours, but they are marked as foreground and background. So, I got a sheet of graph paper and coloured in all the squares that are foreground. Presto – a two-colour chart! I centered the chart over my back stitches – it’s just over four repeats – and started to knit.

Self-striping yarns are always a bit addictive to me. I really want to see what they’re going to do next. In this case, I tried to paint the yarns so that the lights and darks would end up opposed to each other. What I didn’t anticipate is that when they’re switching – like where the green is getting darker and the blue is turning pink – the design is harder for the eye to pick out. I think this will be less of an issue as the sweater progresses and more repeats are visible. You’ll be better able to see what’s happening. But I like it, even the less contrasty bits.

What do you think? Have I converted you to the cause of creating your own colour-graduated yarn?