Variegated versus Self-striping?

[sonnets_and_stitches]

What is the difference between variegated yarn and self-striping yarn? When would one be preferred over the other?

 

~ Joy

 

 

Sidenote: I made up a flower in variegated brown/tan/cream/cranberry yarn, and it looks just awful. Even my husband, who is without opinion on most of what crafts I do, thought so. The splotches of color broke up the shape of the flower. It was like a bizarre camouflage.

[Burgandy]

Self striping is just varigated with longer patches of color.

[birdlady1]

Self striping is just varigated with longer patches of color.

 

Thanks for answering that! I didn't know the difference.

[Selune]

As stated above, self-striping has longer patches of color. This is so, for instance, when making socks, when you go round in circles, the colors will tend to overlap. If you are doing small squares, self-striping will tend to give you a one- or two-colored square, whereas variegated will give you several different rows of color.

 

There are no rules about how long it has to be before color changes, though, and manufacturers differ. I've had some variegated that changed colors pretty uniformly (more like self-striping) and some that changed at random with differing lengths of different colors.

 

It all depends on the effect you are going for. I kind of like variegated, but you have to be careful because if you are doing a large project, you might get a part where it starts to self-stripe due to colors on rows matching, and then it will start to "shift", which looks like unintentional messing up. I did a scarf for my brother in a nice variegated, which made most of it a cornucopia of mixed colors until the little bugger started to self-stripe. So, half the scarf is a nice mix and half is twisted stripe. HA!!!

[snugsmontreal]

It all depends on the effect you are going for. I kind of like variegated, but you have to be careful because if you are doing a large project, you might get a part where it starts to self-stripe due to colors on rows matching, and then it will start to "shift", which looks like unintentional messing up. I did a scarf for my brother in a nice variegated, which made most of it a cornucopia of mixed colors until the little bugger started to self-stripe. So, half the scarf is a nice mix and half is twisted stripe. HA!!!

i totally agree, watch out for this, especially some verigated yarns are listed as a "print" which means if you crocket/knit them at the correct gauge on the label the colors will line up and make a pattern, one i tried was sort of a camo print type. well i knit a purse with it that had cable and details and it really looked like crap i nthe end because with all the cabling it screwed up the pattern and it just looked like a bizaar combinations of colors that were all over the place, nothing lined up and it just did not come out as i thought it would which is a shame since the first ince before i started all of it had the pattern to it.