Everything You Do, You Learn Something New

When I started the SpaceCadet’s Mini-Skein Club, I set it up with two options — the Gentle Mix (mostly semi-solids and gently varigated colourways) and the Wild Mix (mostly wildly variegated yarns).  Everyone’s mini-skein project is unique to them and to the colours they love, so I was excited to give the club members the chance to tell me which  mix of yarns they’d prefer.

For the first shipment, I wasn’t quite sure how wild to make the Wild Mix, so I stayed on the conservative side (…the conservative side of, y’know, wild).  But then feedback I got told me the club members were ready to go further.  So for the next shipment, I was ready to really push it.  They wanted wild, they would get it — because I can do some crazy colour combinations!

I chose five of my most variegated colourways…

And when I looked at them one by one, they were wild — they were ka-razeee.  Here’s an example of what I mean by a highly variegated colourway…

And here’s another…

And another…

See?  They’re pretty wildly variegated.  And pretty different.  And if they were that variegated and different on their own, I expected them to really explode off each other.

But then something really weird happened…

I put them all together and they suddenly looked… tame!  Well, maybe not tame exactly, but somehow a lot gentler, a lot more blended.  Certainly the collection was not as explosive as I thought it would be…

See what I mean?  What happened?!?

I took the little bundle apart and set each yarn on its own — and they each looked wild again.  Put them back together and…  they seemed subdued.  And I had to do it a couple of times before I realised what was happening.

Here’s the thing…  A wildly variegated yarn looks wild because the colours within it are so unrelated to each other.  They contrast, they compliment, and they make each other pop.  Put a few of these colours together and something beautiful happens!

But where each yarn contains a whole rainbow of colours, those same shades are likely to appear in other wildly variegated yarns too.  So when you put several such wildly coloured yarns together, the rainbows all start to blend into one another, to reflect one another.   Even colourways that look incredibly different can actually begin to… coordinate with each other.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes…

So I sat down and rethought the options, and here’s what I realised: those of you who choose the Gentle Mix are doing so because you want to create a mini-skein project that blends gently from one yarn to the next.  And those of you who choose the Wild mix are aiming to create a project with an overall effect of exciting contrasts.

And I want to make sure the SpaceCadet’s Mini-Skein Club parcels help that to happen, so I’m going to slightly change the way I choose the yarns that go into the two mixes.  The Gentle Mix will stay mostly as it has been but, for the Wild Mix, I’m going to choose colourways that will make the whole parcel more contrasting, rather than just focusing on variegated yarns.  That will mean more semi-solids in the Wild Mix than there were before, but don’t worry — the overall effect will still be wild.

And you’re going to love it, because the mini-skein project you’re going to make with the new Wild Mix will be crazy colourful and eye-poppingly gorgeous!  And isn’t that what you were aiming for all along?