What do I pair variegated yarns with?

Old Money, Sugar Bomb, and Maximal Teal pair perfectly together.

Hello Wooly Tribe,

Variegated yarn is such an exciting proposition. Multiple colors flowing together, melding into new colors, sometimes with speckles thrown on top, sometimes not. There are endless iterations of these beautiful yarns and if you’ve spent any time looking around the internet or scrolling through TikTok, you’re bound to see countless indie dyers showing off their beautiful skeins.

So, you make the leap and you buy one skein. Or maybe it’s two. Or more!

And then they arrive at your door. Now what?

Often times those gorgeous skeins get put into stashes and sometimes they don’t come back out. Not because they aren’t loved, but simply because the person who fell in love with them in the first place doesn’t know how to incorporate them into a project.

Well, never fear! We’re here to help!

First, let’s talk about pairings.

Using a variegated yarn for an entire project can be a bit daunting, depending on the project. A hat or scarf can be an easy entry point, but even that small project could be overwhelmed by a big, bold, variegated yarn. Sometimes you need a tonal yarn to balance things out – add a respite for your eyes from the boldness of the variegated yarn.

Ahhhh…but how to choose that tonal? This is an important question.

In the fashion world, we might pick a boldly printed top and pair it with pants that pull out a single color from that pattern. However, if we tried doing that with our variegated and tonal yarns, the result might not be as pleasing as you would expect. Here’s the reason: when you’re knitting along with your variegated colorway – let’s say it’s our Sugar Bomb colorway – and you chose a matching magenta tonal to pair with it, when you put the Sugar Bomb magenta and the tonal magenta side-by-side on your needle, you won’t be able to differentiate between the two! So, we need to bring a different color into the mix.

For Sugar Bomb, we recommend pairing it with Maximal Teal and Old Money. These two tonals are strong on their own and can stand up to the bright and bold intensity of Sugar Bomb. Now picture casting on a top down sweater and doing the 2x2 ribbing in Sugar Bomb and then moving over to Maximal Teal and Old Money stripes and you move down into the body of the sweater. Big, bold, and ready to stand out in a crowd without any colors being lost!

On our descriptions page, we will put in our suggestions for pairings for each colorway we produce. Of course, it’s just a suggestion and your imagination may take you in a completely different direction – that’s wonderful! There is no absolute right or wrong way to combine colors. Do what appeals to you, make things your own – when in doubt, go for it! Your creations are your own and should reflect who you are and what makes you happy.

So go out there and mix and match to your heart’s content! We’ll be here making colors to inspire and delight you.

All the best,

Vicky