Color Pooling Crochet Stitch Games-Class

Planned vs. Accidental Color “Pooling”

 

Last summer’s Get Your Geek On CGOA event inspired my new three-hour crochet class in Charleston SC (July 13, 2016); some new booklets and patterns too. Many of us have sought insight into using hand-painted yarns. These yarns are often boldly variegated with short color changes and other indie dyeing methods. Color pooling is exciting!

You’re looking at stitch game projects I designed from 2009 to a month ago. (There are more but they don’t all fit in this image.) Pattern for the vivid blue striped scarf (Jempool) releases this week.

Use crochet stitches to turn the color volume up or down (or both, selectively!). Exaggerate the element of chance: accidental pooling. Or, eliminate it: planned pooling.

What’s Color Pooling?

Variegated (multi-colored) yarns seem to have randomly and evenly mixed colors in one skein. It’s like a party in a ball…unless the colors stop looking well-blended when crocheted or knitted. A color might repeat too often, or pile (pool) up on itself row after row in a blotchy way. That’s pooling in a bad way.

Texture pooling is a variation of color pooling. Ever use a yarn with dramatic thick and thin areas, and find that these texture contrasts clump together awkwardly? The texture changes are pooling. That also happened with the intermittent tinsel sections of an expensive mohair yarn. I thought it would look magical! Instead, the tinsel just looked lumpy and stiff when I crocheted it.

Sprinkling Love Knots among simple double crochets {UK: tr} retained the otherworldly look of the yarn by giving the tinsel more room. The result was Marisa Artwalk, an exhilarating discovery.

“Stitch Pooling” Makes Color Pooling a Game

A simple stitch game I like, especially with crochet, is what I call stitch pooling. I switch to a contrasting crochet stitch when a certain color comes up as I crochet. Knitters do this when they switch from stockinette to garter whenever a certain color comes up, for example. Crochet gives us so many texture choices for creating a simple game, or a wildly challenging one! You can heighten or de-emphasize colors too. This is accidental color pooling that’s fresh, interesting, and each result is unique. Just use familiar crochet stitches.

Pictured at right are three examples of beginner-level stitch games in a pattern booklet.

Color Pooling According to Plan

Eliminate chance and you get regular coordinated patterns of color. The game here is to identify the unique color code of a variegated yarn. You decide where they show up in your project. (See my newsletter issue #77, Find the Color Code of Short Striping Yarns.) Then, choose the crochet stitch, gauge, and number of stitches to get the color patterning you want.

To see when this class is offered next, check the Upcoming Classes & Events page. It’s updated regularly.