It's All Relative

I'm so used to beaming 'long' warps (10+ yards) that these relatively short warps (5.6 meters) seem to zip onto the beam in no time at all.

Since I've worked a lot with variegated yarns I decided to submit an article to Handwoven about how I use them.  The challenge, of course, is that they prefer readily available yarns so that their readers can source the yarns profiled in their projects.  With so many of Handwoven readers being somewhat inexperienced, I felt I ought to use a yarn that is reasonably friendly to work with, not the rick rack and bamboo yarns in these particular scarves.  So I will work on that article in December and hope to submit early in January.  The deadline is mid-February, and since I don't get home until after the deadline, it's either do it now or not at all.

However, as I was winding this yarn onto a cone I thought of a little hint that some people may not know about.  A skein of variegated yarn can be a bit 'tricky' - this particular yarn has several shades of red, gold and purple in it.  Sometimes it is hard to know which yarn to pair with a variegated.

Now the photo here makes the warp look very red.  Part of that is because I paired the rick rack with a red bamboo.  But the reason I used the red is because as the cone winder was winding the yarn from the skein onto the cone, the motion of the yarn travelling round and round blurred into a predominantly red colour.

I could have used other colours instead of the red, but for this first warp I had the right shade of red on hand for both warp and weft and went the easy route.

So if you aren't sure what yarn colour will go with your variegated yarn, try winding it onto a cone or ball winder and see what colour it looks as it is being wound.....