Trouble with pattern and variegated yarn

[jmh44]

I have been crocheting an easy afghan pattern using variegated yarn. I was about 75% finished when I noticed that the bottom rows were flared out about 2".   Taking a closer look, I had not only accidentally changed the hook size from a K to a J, but I had also changed the stitch from (sc, dc,dc) to (sc, hdc,hdc).  I pulled it back to the row where I was using the K hook and the correct stitch and began again, using the K hook and the correct pattern stitch.

 

After pulling 75% of the afghan back to the correct row, I thought everything was fine when I noticed that the colors were stacking up on each row.  It was no longer variegated.  How do I prevent this from happening?  Do I need to attach the balls of yarn in a certain color sequence?  

Thanks, Judy

[greyhoundgrandma]

With variegated threads you never can tell how they will look. And when you change skeins the pattern can change. Sometimes they stack or sometimes you get a slanted stripe. I've never played around with the variegated yarn to try to change the pattern by attaching the new skein at a different area of the variegation, but it seems like that would make a difference.

[Gingerbread Girl]

This is just the nature of variegated yarn. It works up in unpredictable patterns. You can try to make it a bit more "random" by changing skeins every couple of rows but I've never bothered doing that - I just let it work up naturally. If you go to Ravelry and search for any variegated yarn then check out the photos of projects people have made with it, you'll see there's a wide variety in the effect it lends to each project.

[Avon Lady]

I personally think that is pretty!  That is the "personality" of variegated yarn coming out!

[LI Roe]

I was once told (and it does work at times) that when you end a skein of variegated, in order to have the pattern stay the same, you join with the same color that you ended with. I try to match the flow of the colors when joining and usually it is very close in pattern when you continue.

 

LI Roe

[Becky Morgan]

A few years ago, there was a designer...I can't think of her name...who did beautiful work using Red Heart Super Saver variegated so that the colors lined up just so. She had a white afghan with grapes and vines made with white yarn and a grapevine colorway. If you got the gauge just right, when you switched yarn in one spot and worked clusters, you got leaves, and in the next spot, you got grapes.

 

If you don't want color blocks, and you can use more than one strand, offsetting them works (say it's red/white/blue, start with red on one skein and white or blue on the other so it breaks up the pattern.) You can also use one strand of variegated and another that is either one of the colors in the print or a neutral.