Lacy pattern in dark, variegated yarn?

[rivenwanderer]

I'm contemplating knitting a Damask shawl from Malabribo Sock yarn from my stash--the Abril colorway, which is a fairly dark purple-and-navy variegated thing. (Some reasonably representative pictures found on Flickr: one, two)

I fell in love with the Damask pattern because of the lovely curving stitch pattern. Somewhere along the line, I got the idea that if you want a stitch pattern to show up, you can use varigated yarn, or dark colors, but not both. How true is this? Should I seek out a lighter and/or solid yarn for my Damask and use the Abril for stripey socks or something? Or should I go for it?

Comments

[jumpuphigh]

I just finished a lacy scarf in a dark, variegated yarn and it looks lovely. Have you knitted a swatch in the pattern? If not, knit and block a swatch and see if you like it.

I think you should go dark

[jazzypom]

I love seeing the juxtaposition of delicate lace stitches with rich, sublime saturated colours, and you do find whilst knitting that the yarn seems lighter in the knit than it does on the ball. Also, if you wear a lot of white or pale colours, the lace will go wonderfully with it.

Man, I wish I could do lace. I'll start off relatively okay, then hit row 22 and turn into an utter dyslexic because I get so utterly confused. I can read charts for cables and fair isle no problem, but with lace, I get all a twitter. And yet - I can't read line by line instructions of lace, my brain goes all tl;dr.

[ginny_t]

I think it'll work nicely. I wouldn't do a pattern like that in a yarn with any more variegation than the Mmmmmalabrigo has, but I think it'll be good. The pattern will show differently in a darker yarn than a lighter one, but I don't think that's necessarily a drawback, just something to know going in.

[hugh_mannity]

I think it would work. It's a strong pattern, not too airy and the colour changes are subtle and within pretty much the same palette.

There's variegated yarn and then there's ZOMG!TEHCOLORZ!!! variegated yarn -- that really won't work for anything beyond stockinette or a 3x1 rib.

[geeksdoitbetter]

if you already own the yarn, i say a swatch is in order!

in my experience, varigated + intense patterning = not seeing much of anything, really

but, you've got nothing to lose in trying it out

[laughingrat]

Oh, with that yarn, I think it would work fine. The colors are close enough in value and hue that it wouldn't be too distracting, most likely.

[uninvitedcat]

I recently started knitting the Matilda shawl in a fine, variegated green/purple/blue yarn. I'm finding it's coming out a little bit like camoflage patterning - would be happy to try and take a decent photo and put up if you like? But, the colour change is quite short/speedy on this yarn, so you may find with a more gentle colour change it looks fine.

For an example of a variegated yarn shawl, you could look at a recent example of mine here. I think it came out quite well overall!

[pinesandmaples]

How do you feel about this knitter's version of that shawl? Because yours will be similar, with darker colors.