Hot Trend! 10+ Gradient Yarns You’ve Got to Try

As I posted last week, I attended the TNNA trade show in Phoenix recently and picked up some great new yarns for 2015. Here’s a fun bulky that I’m really excited about.

This single-ply yarn is 100% wool—wool harvested from sheep in Colorado and then dyed in California. The folks at Freia have mastered the process of dyeing ombre and gradient yarns. Their yarns are variegated, but not like other variegated styles you might be used to. One ball of yarn shifts slowly from one color to the next, creating a long watercolor transition that is just gorgeous. There’s no color pooling with these colorways. Below, I’ve knitted a large swatch with Super Bulky. This swatch is 15″ long, worked on size 15 needles over 21 stitches. This swatch represents the color shifts within one whole ball of yarn. You see there are no repeats! I used the stitch pattern from the Tanawha Wrap in the winter 2015 issue of Interweave Knits, which you can also see below. This is a cool reversible stitch that look great in bulky gauges. Working with 21 stitches of the stitch pattern, one ball of Freia Super Bulky resulted in 15″ of fabric. With 4 balls, you’d have a colorful 60″ scarf version of the wrap.

It’s so fun to knit with this yarn. Freia’s ombre yarn colors consist of 4 to 5 shades within each ball, and each ball begins and ends with different colors. Check out the Freia website here for more info. The folks at Freia have been dyeing as fast as they can and the yarn is available in some yarn shops now, with more shipping soon. It won’t be available on the website until they have backstock, so call around to shops to find some of this gorgeous yarn.

Ombre yarns lend themselves to modular projects quite nicely, such as the popular Ojo de Dios shawl from the winter 2014 issue of Interweave Knits. This shawl was knitted in Plymouth Gina.

What ombre yarns are you loving right now? It’s such a hot trend in knitting, I think we’ll be seeing even more of it this year. I’ve collected a few examples of gradient yarns I’ve come across; feel free to add more in the comments!

• All of Freia’s yarns offered in Ombre colors
• Schoppel Wolle Gradient
• Schoppel Wolle Reggae Ombre
• Noro Kureyon
• Wooltopia
• Plymouth Gina
• Plymouth Gina Chunky
• Universal Classic Shades

Stay tuned for more new yarns, yarn colors, and projects for 2015.

Cheers,