Tuesday, September 08, 2009
Fun with Zauberball
In my ongoing exploration of self-striping yarns, I have been having fun lately playing with a German yarn, Zauberball.
A fine fingering weight yarn--75% virgin wool, 25% nylon, 420 m. per 100 g. ball--it comes in balls of coordinating colours, with long colour repeats. I have been working with a vibrant red/gold/brown mix called "Gebrannte Mandeln" (Burnt Almonds).
It is marketed by Schoppel Wolle as a sock yarn. And it certainly makes beautiful, widely striped socks. But as you might expect, I am doing other things with it. Here I am experimenting with a lace stitch pattern, for a possible scarf or shawl--or something.
Like the Kauni Effekt yarn that I use, it has long, graduated colours which appear to blend from one to the next. In Zauberball, the colour repeats are smaller, so it doesn't take as long to watch the colours change. The weight of this yarn is very light, lighter than most fingering weight yarns I am familiar with. It isn't quite laceweight, either.
I can see this yarn working very well with many of my patterns which use a lightweight yarn. For example, I can see it working up beautifully in the Brickwork scarf. Because of the stitch pattern, the colour bands would move in a chevron-like design.
Zauberball, like many self-striping yarns, has so many uses. And the built-in colour sequences keep the knitting alive and interesting.
If you want to see some other examples of self-striping knitting, take a look at my Kauni Collection.
