New Release: Fading Bias

  Are you a sucker for gradients?  I love the skeins that have long color changes moving from a darker to a lighter shade of the same color, or the skeins that move slowly from one color to a totally different color.  But when I saw the gradient mini skein packs on the Black Trillium website.....well, it was obvious I needed to come up with a project for one of those to include in the Color Packs & Stash Scraps collection!

Black Trillium offers gradient packs in 4 bases - 2 are fingering-weight, one is dk, and the last is worsted.  Fading Bias is written for Lilt Sock, the gorgeous merino/silk blend which includes 675 yds of yarn per pack (and uses almost all of it), but if you were dying to try the Pebble Sock base, or already had that on hand, you could easily make this pattern work by just leaving a couple mesh rows out of each big color block to make sure you don't run short on yarn.

This pattern is one of those projects where it takes you a moment to look over the pattern and figure out exactly what is going on, but once you're a couple rows in, the stitch pattern is easily memorized and the knitting becomes meditative.  I'm as much a process knitter as a project knitter, so I love bigger projects that take more than a few days, but don't have any complicated parts that might force me to stop and wait until I have some time to concentrate before I can move on with my knitting.  This is the type of project that I can bring with me when I'm in a waiting room, something I can pick up and put down, something I can knit while I'm watching tv or riding in the car.  




It makes a cheerful winter accessory, giving just a little extra layer of warmth to the neck & shoulders.  And because it's made from light-weight yarn and is mostly mesh, it easily coordinates with warmer-weather clothes as well.

This scarf uses pretty basic stitches - knit, purl, yarn over, knitting 2 stitches together, knitting into the front & back legs of one stitch.  The two things that might be a little trickier for beginning knitters would be carrying colors up the side (only in small sections) and fixing mistakes if they occur.  (I'd recommend using a lifeline if fixing mistakes makes you crazy, although every RS row is basically a "rest row".)

I owe the generous ladies who test knit this pattern, LTimms, ekolatch & DeChertsey, a big thank you!  And another big thank you goes to Melanie, the woman behind Black Trillium Fibres, who supported this project even though I was fairly vague in my proposal!  You can check out her website here, or get a glimpse into her life on Instagram here.

Fading Bias is available as an individual pattern download on Ravelry now.  If you've already purchased the Color Packs & Stash Scraps collection, you can access this new pattern by clicking the "update available" button that should appear next to the pattern collection icon in your Ravelry library.  And if you haven't purchased the collection yet, you can still get it at a discounted price here!