No, I don’t mean colorfast or stability of dyes. I mean starting to be wary of pattern designs that fade from one color to another…or fade resistant.

Planning To Avoid Being Fade Resistant

Shifts, fades, blends…when it comes to knitting, they can be a bit confounding.

I never jumped on the Andrea Mowry bandwagon with all of her Find Your Fade, Shifty, Nightshift, Shiftigan, etc. And until now, I never attempted the highly advertised Rios Slip Stitch Afghan.

Honestly, I had designed so many fabrics that blended beautiful variegated yarns that I probably could have easily used one of those techniques for my current project. But I decided I should finally get over my “fade resistance” and try it.

The basic concept of most of these designs is that you combine two colors of mottled or variegated yarns using a slip-stitch pattern. Then you switch out one of the colorways to a new colorway. You continue this so that the colors blend into each other in a very aesthetically pleasing way.

Two things I wish I had known about this pattern design before I started it:

1. Which of the two colors in each “stripe” was foreground and which was background. I assumed Color A would be foreground…it isn’t.
2. I wish I had seen the actually colorways of Malabrigo Rios.

For others who decide to make this kind of fabric, I’d suggest putting together a chart of yarns you’d like to use. And further, see if you can find examples of the two colorways combined already. I’m going back to my Microsoft OneNote design ideas to do something like this.

This is just documenting what I’m actually doing. So if you consider making this afghan design, I’ll publish the full chart of color combinations I end up using with fabric examples that might help you choose yarn.

Current Knitting

As is obvious, I’m working diligently on the Rios Slip Stitch Afghan.

I’ve finished the fourth stripe and started the fifth. Which basically means that I’m on track to finish it in plenty of time.