Today there are beautiful hand dyed yarns available for knitters.  And knitters have fallen in love with them for socks, scarves, and whole sweaters.  Why settle for just one color when you can have several that look fantastic together?  They are wonderful  to work with--the colors change in your hands, sometimes bold color that stripes as it's knit and other times soft heathery color changing with a watercolor look.  It's mesmerizing, and I've heard many knitters comment that they knit faster using these yarns because they can't wait to see what happens next.  The variety is seemingly endless.  But how to use them for the best possible result without the color "pooling" into distracting blobs of one color?

These yarns, so beautiful in the skein, so tempting to buy, often disappoint when they are actually knit if not used with a little thought.  Why?  Well, picture how these yarns are dyed.  There are many techniques used to get the beautiful color effects in these yarns (to be discussed in a later guide!), but basically they start the same--with the undyed yarn loosely tied into a hank.  In other words, a large circle.  Whether they are hand painted, space or dip-dyed, there are only so many little arcs of that circle that will be each separate color.  So things may start out fine on your sweater when you're ribbing or increasing at the beginning of your project--say a sweater--, but when you get to the body of the sweater, usually knit on a certain unchanging number of stitches, well, stuff happens.  You're knitting either around or back and forth, but using the same amount of yarn each row, and a pattern develops.  Sometimes it looks great--other times, not.  You need to take charge if you don't like what's happening.

Here's how:  Go ahead and buy that yarn--you know you love it, you'll never quit thinking of it, you REALLY NEED IT!  But--when you get home, before you start knitting, take a few minutes to look at that hank of yarn and think about it a little bit.  Are your color changes short little runs, or are there yards and yards of one color before changing?  Knit a little swatch, and then knit a bigger swatch.  See if you like the way the colors play off each other.  If you have a yarn with long stretches of color, you're probably ok--your yarn will form subtle stripes.  Short burst of color are a little harder, but there's a tried and true trick for working with these.  Assuming you have more than one hank of your beautiful yarn, open two skeins and knit alternating from skein to skein every couple rows.  Just be sure you start the second skein at a different color repeat from the first--the idea is to 'trick' the yarn so it can't pool.  Only one skein?  No problem--either wind it into two little balls, or wind it into one ball and knit from each end.  You don't need to cut your yarn at the end of each row--assuming you're changing every couple rows, just carry the unused yarn up the side and pick it up two rows later.

Here's another idea--use your fantastic yarn with a solid color, or even another hand dyed yarn, and do Fair Isle or just stripes.  Or while you're doing those swatches, see what happens when you add a pattern, especially one that may change stitch count on each row.  You may be able to foil those pooling colors. 

And finally, remember that some people love those pooling colors and letting the yarn do it's own thing.  You may be one of them.  And besides, it's hand knit!  How bad can it be?