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This whole gradient thing that is happening in the yarn world is endlessly inspiring. As if yarn wasn’t beautiful enough, dyers had to turn the awesome up to eleven with these shaded combinations of glorious color. Of course, they are a challenge for me as a designer. How can I bring more to the party when such fantastic results can be achieved by simply letting the colors be? Challenge accepted!

This stole is the result of my trying to figure out how to re-envision ways to work with the multi-skein style gradient. Starting with a gorgeous gradient set from Miss Babs (Yummy 2-ply fingering in the color Carmen) I decided to take the colors out of their “order”. If you consider each individual skein as a separate color you can color with them like crayons.

But I still wanted to maintain the gradient nature, so I divided the color range into two halves and used them to create a striping pattern that gradually changed from high contrast to low contrast. Each stripe flowing along the gradient and creating a secondary gradient of diminishing contrast. To allow the yarn to shine I kept both the construction and stitch pattern simple. But not boring.

This rectangular stole is worked on the bias and features a motif that is a combination of slip stitch color-work and lace that is fun and easy to work. After a few repeats you will probably be able to knit with only minimal reference to the instructions. While I fell in love with this purple/pink/gray color combination, I cannot wait to see the other beautiful colors ranges that other knitters choose to work with. I can even see it being done with a solid and gradient. It would even look great in two solids. If you decide to do something different please share your pictures with me!