I’ve been working on something big behind the scenes (and despite the puppies); my first pattern collection. Ombré Knits, Volume 1 is a collection designed specifically to take advantage of (you guessed it!) ombré yarns.
Ombré yarns are not like other yarns, in a few ways. Firstly, you have to use at least 85% of the skein in order for the ombré effect to be visible. Secondly, if you do a triangular shawl (as an example) as your stitch count gets longer, the distance between colour changes gets visually shorter and the gradient can ‘compress’ towards the bottom of your shawl. This can work beautifully for single colour fades, like feather, but can end up looking like wide, banded stripes with a multi colour piece like Aurora.
At yarn festivals, I often get customers who want to replicate a sample they’ve seen at my booth, or who want pattern suggestions to go along with their yarn. For all these reasons and more, I’ve written a collection of patterns made specifically to make your gradient yarns shine, and I’ve made recommendations in every case about what types of colours work best.
I’ve decided to go all-out for this book release. There are 10 patterns, and it will be available both as a printed book and an e-book. Individual patterns will be available from Ravelry as well. We have hired hair and make up artists and models. The shoot for the book will be at the beginning of April, and the no-rain plan is to do it at my friends highland cattle farm.
The planned release date for the book online is Sunday April 30th – the printed version will be released at The Knitters Frolic in Toronto next month. You’ll be able to download the book, or purchase a printed version off our website.
It’s been a lot of work to design, test knit and tech-edit this collection. I couldn’t have done it without my two most supportive knitters, Kathryn and Kali. The layout is underway now and the shoot will be the final step. We’re over the moon over here!
