Different project, different stripes!
If you’ve ever knit a hat or a shawl with standard self-striping yarn, you’ve probably noticed that the effect is very different than when you knit socks with the same yarn.
Most self-striping yarn is planned for socks, with narrow stripes that look great around a small circumference. When you knit a hat, you’re roughly doubling the number of stitches, which makes the stripes about half as wide. In a shawl, the effect changes again, with stripes getting skinnier as the project grows.
This is why we offer several versions of the same colourway. We plan the striping to match the project, using a bit of math up front to account for stitch counts and the geometry of the pattern. Once that work is done, the knitting experience is smooth and straightforward. The colour changes happen on their own, there’s nothing extra to manage, and no extra ends to weave in.
This is easiest to see with an example, so here is our Whiskey in a Teacup colourway in three different versions.
The colour map at the bottom of each image shows all the stripes in the full skein, from one end to the other - basically if you cast on from one end of the yarn and knit a scarf that used every inch of the yarn, your scarf would look like the colour map.
This is the most familiar type of self-striping. We call ours Round Trip because the stripes have two matching halves, like going there and back again, so you can make a pair of matching socks or mittens.
Sometimes I mirror the two halves (usually when the colour sequence would have an awkward break in the middle otherwise) but for Whiskey in a Teacup it made most sense to continue the stripes uninterrupted in the same direction.
And because I can't help myself, I also added a little bonus: a short section of solid contrast colour built right into the skein. It’s 15 g of a deep greeny-black, just enough for heels or toes.
What this version is designed for:
Matching socks or mittens, narrow stripes.
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Shawl stripes are designed to match the geometry of a standard triangular shawl. In a triangular shawl, you start by casting on just a few stitches, then increase regularly so the rows get longer and longer as you knit.
In order for the stripes to look even on the finished shawl, each section of colour needs to be longer than the previous one. We do the math for the geometry of the triangle ahead of time and plan the stripe lengths so they come out even in the finished piece.
You’ll notice that the colour map looks very different from the round trip version. In the shawl there are only 12 colourful stripes plus that wide black border. The socks have 96 stripes plus the black!
What this version is designed for:
Triangular shawls with even stripes.
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The sweater version is designed specifically for top-down, seamless baby sweaters.
For this construction, you cast on at the neck and increase until you reach the armpits, where the sleeves and body are separated. The striping is planned only for the yoke, from the neck to the armpits. The rest of the sweater is a solid colour.
The math here is similar to the shawl, but adjusted because you start with far more stitches and the yoke is a relatively small part of the finished sweater. The majority of the skein is the dark grey for the sleeves and body - for the smallest sweater sizes you'll have a bunch of this grey left over.
What this version is designed for:
Top-down baby sweaters with a striped yoke.
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All three versions use the same colours. What changes is how those colours are planned and dyed. By starting with the structure of the project and doing the math ahead of time, we can make sure the striping behaves the way you expect it to in the finished piece. The goal is always the same: knitting that feels straightforward and enjoyable, with results that look intentional and impressive without extra effort or ends to weave in.
Whiskey in a Teacup will be back in the shop soon!