Thursday, October 26, 2006

Dyelot dilemma

Dangnabit! As I believed I mentioned, I'm working on my Eris sleeve off two different dye-lots. And I can tell. There are stripes. I need honest knitterly opinions about whether they are noticeable, annoying to you, not likely to be noted by non-knitters, etc. The yarn is *just* tweedy and heathery enough where I think it *might* be okay, but on the other hand, it just might not.

I started knitting with the two dye-lots every other row right where the sleeve comes out of the shoulder join, at the end of the raglan seam. So, about 4" above where the needles currently are on the sleeve.

Eris dyelot 1 Eris dyelot 3
Eris dyelot 2 Eris dyelot 4

You can really see it, for example, in that first one on the upper left, if you click on it to go to the larger image in Flickr. Or on the one on the top right, just check out how different the balls of yarn are. Sheesh.

Well, I'm not going to do any frogging right now, but I will be taking this to SnB tomorrow night for some real-light opinions (though really, they are all relatively accurate color-wise). In the mean time, should I just learn to live with this? Is it not that noticeable? How do I go about getting another dye-lot when I bout the yarn over a year ago? What have you done in a similar situation?

I might hit the sack, or at least put this away, before it takes on any more larger-than-life, eschatological, end-of-the world proportions. Check your dye-lots, y'all.

8 comments:

schrodinger said...

I can't see it, but I'm a little blurry eyed. I think you should take danielle advice.

Anonymous said...

I agree with Danille. You need a non-knitter who's not you or Coffeeboy to see it in daylight. If that person can't see, then I wouldn't worry about it. Unless you do worry about it. In that case, you might need to re-knit the sleeves. Here's a tip I heard from my LYS owner. Knit with both dye lots by alternating balls of yarn every two rows. They'll blend.

Anonymous said...

I like Danielle's suggestion too. I would also add that you should not mention where the color differences are when you have someone look at the sweater. In my experience, it seems like usually the knitter making the item in question notices the anomolies of yarn color or a pattern, and usually nobody else even suspected something was "off". (In my case, it was an error in a cable pattern that I didn't notice until it was too late to fix.)

Lazuli said...

Thanks everyone! Now to figure out how to find a non-knitter who's not Coffeeboy and who doesn't involve ridiculous amounts of lugging a sweater around. Maybe my neighbor? Who will ever after know I'm nuts?

I might also just re-do following Rose's every two rows and see if that works... and then I will probably hunt for dye lots.

Anonymous said...

On the sleeve/shoulder picture, I can see it. I've had this happen a couple of times and you have several options. You can rip it and use the off-colored skein for the ribbing where it won't show so much. You can make sure the other sleeve/shoulder are knit the same way and make it a feature. You can overdye the whole thing when it's done so everything matches. You can complete it and wash it, hoping that it bleeds and the color evens out (and then overdye it if it doesn't). My sympathies - this is a tough situation to deal with!

Sheepish Annie said...

Tough one...yes I can see it. But handknits are supposed to have a handmade look. It may just need to be a "charactaristic" of the garment. I'm somewhat easy to please so I'd probably leave it...

Lone Knitter said...

This reminds me of that Seinfeld episode involving the white cashmere sweater with a red dot on it. Some people will see it and others won't. I think it's beautiful.

Greta_Jane said...

I actually can't see it, but it might be the picture as it shows up on my screen.