Pinwheel sweater pattern and self striping yarn

[demomo]

I am planning to make the pinwheel sweater on elann.com for my cousin's upcoming baby.  I was thinking about doing it in a self striping yarn, but didn't know how well that would work out.  Has anyone tried that?

(I'm sorry if this has been posted before - I tried doing some searches and didn't come up with anything!)

Comments

[amberica]

I think I saw this done at least once, probably on Ravelry. If memory serves, it looked pretty nice.

[sarakate]

By "self striping", are you thinking of something like Noro or SWS or Jojoland, where the striping sequence is very long? I've seen several examples of that, and it looks quite nice, although the stripes get thinner and thinner as you approach the edge. In something with a shorter stripe sequence, more like the self-striping sock yarns (although this is written for worsted), you might get some oddity since your row length will be a whole lot longer than the row length those yarns are planned around; you'd just have to try it to see how that would come out, whether it would look random or the colors would stack into blocks or what.

[stellamarys]

I can see the stripes working better in the small size for a child.

[sarakate]

Even in a small size, once you get beyond the center of the pinwheel, your stripes are going to start breaking up. For instance, consider the case of a self-striping yarn that's designed to make 3-row stripes (which I think is probably a good median striping length) on a sock of approximately 8" girth -- the color sequences are going to be set up so you can knit approximately 24" before the color changes on you. When you translate that out to a pinwheel, by the time you're at a 4" diameter you're down to less than 2 rows per stripe, and when you get to 7.5" (which is well before you get to the arm openings) you're at less than 1 row per stripe. From that point on, you're going to get something other than stripes, and exactly what you get is going to change as you continue to work, since the circumference is constantly increasing.

[demomo]

This is exactly what I feared, and although it seemed logical, I was hoping that logic would not prevail and someone would say "it's amazing! go for it!"

Thanks for the help. Thanks to everyone for the opinions!

[lizardgirl2112]

No good ideas here.. just want to say good luck as that looks REALLY neat!

[dujour]

That's a very neat pattern. I'm wondering how it would work if you used three strands to change the distinct stripes to gradual color changes. That could be interesting. I may have to think about this for a while.

[onewomanshow]

I've made this with solids as the pattern suggests, and I think using something like Noro Kureyon would be awesome!