Taking "Fine Art" Literally - Planned Pooling with Rowan Fine Art Aran

As you may know, I am a lucky girl, and receive sample skeins of new yarns from Rowan Yarns. I was head-over-heels for their fingering weight sock yarn, Fine Art.

My Fine Art Tee

My Fine Art Hood

But then I got this in the mail, Fine Art's big brother: Fine Art Aran!

To be honest, I did not like it at first! The colors in the skein seemed to be such a mish mash, I didn't know how on earth they would ever knit up well.

That being said, they do look good together in this parrot! 😁

I do know people love highly-variegated yarns, so I wondered... what could I do to properly embrace this one?

One of the reasons I'm not into variegated yarns is COLOR POOLING. This seemingly haphazard shade pooling is demonstrated well in some of the garments from the Fine Art Aran Mini-Collection:

See Van Gogh on Ravelry

It works better in this free pattern, Jupiter -- but do you know why?

It's because of shaping. You see, this type of yarn is "space-dyed", a method that forces each color to occupy a very specific length in the skein. If your rows are all one width (like in a Jupiter cardigan front above), the yarn will always pool the same way. If you have waist shaping like in the Van Gogh cardigan, the colors will cover a different number of stitches because the rows get wider (increases) or narrower (decreases).

You can tell if you have a space-dyed yarn if you open the skein and see stark, defined color changes:

This is done to great effect in sock yarns from Opal, where one yarn creates intentional striping colorwork. Look, another Van Gogh! There is a whole series of Opal Van Gogh socks, colored after his paintings.

How on earth do they manage that, you ask? Planned Pooling!! Basically, if you know the width of the item you are going to knit (and a sock is generally a predictable width for most people), you can dye yarn so that it pools together to make a pattern.

WOWZERS, WATERMELONS!!

Originally from knitpurlgirl.etsy.com

But how about working it backwards? Can you take a space-dyed yarn and figure out the pattern it will make? Hell, yeah.

Karla Steubing (a.k.a. Statnerd on Ravelry) is the queen of Planned Pooling on the internet. Read her detailed article in Twist Collective, and check out some of her projects on Ravelry:

There is a calculator on the web for this, plannedpooling.com, so let's do it.

HOW TO DO IT

1. Open up your skein (or pull many lengths of your ball and loop it into a skein) to see the color order, starting anywhere.

I saw 12 colors, in a 6-color repeat:

Green - Orange - Green - Blue - Purple - Blue 

NOTE: Make sure to measure each wave of color, even if they repeat themselves, the hand-dyer may have made some of them different lengths!

2. Make a swatch (about 30 sts wide), and record how many stitches each color band takes. It will be a bit different each time the color comes up, so take an average.  

This is where my note above came in handy... one "orange" was 7 stitches, but the other was 9!

3. Start knitting again for a few rows (maybe 50 sts this time) and double- check your stitch counts. If you are falling short most of the time, decrease the number of stitches in that color band. It's much easier to loosen stitches than to tighten them, believe me.

4. Go to plannedpooling.com. Add colors until you have enough, then go through the color wheel to pick the perfect colors. End by filling in the number of stitches for each color.

5. Start a "virtual" knit.  Change the stitch count by one to see the magical changes!

6. IMPORTANT: I'm not sure a knitter wrote this program. A knitter's chart starts at the bottom right and goes left. Well... this chart will read like a book. To fix this, turn it 180 degrees, clockwise.

7. Cast-on your favorite stitch count and knit! You can use the print-out as a chart (much like a colorwork chart), or you can just memorize the number of stitches you need for each color.

NOTE: It is important that you keep to the number. If you come out with less stitches, pull the stitches very tight until you come close. If you come out with more stitches, loosen them up to get to the right number. I thank this blog post for this crucial advice!

8. If you eventually find yourself off by a stitch, that's ok. I left out a stitch 1/3 through and didn't notice until much later, but the eye can't see the difference. Don't do this too often though, you will notice eventually!

Now, one of the problems with a fun planned pooling project like this is that you're making squares/rectangles... and there are a limited number of projects that use this shape, right?

I thought about sewing it into a cowl, much like Life Lackadaisical's in-the-round "swatch cowls".

I thought about a messenger bag.

Cocoknits Felted Messenger Bag pattern here

I thought about a pillow with a fabric backing... and this is a living room that would suit some of the colorways. 😂

And then I thought... if it's called Fine Art, let's make it literally into fine art!

I bought a $3 canvas at the "dollar" store...

... gathered my tools...

... and started nailing, making sure to weave the nail through the yarn strands so it caught.

It took A LOT of nails.  I gave up at some point, cuz really, it was okay, I wasn't going to sell it.

... or was I?!

See my Fine Art, Literally on Ravelry

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