Knitting and stripes go together like bread and butter. I love to knit with stripes for a variety of reasons.
- smaller knitting segments makes it easier to see progress
- a motivator to knit 'just another stripe' before putting the project down
- fun color combinations to experiment with
- many stripe patterns to play with
The following pictures show different stripe ideas.The pattern for this backpack calls for two different 50 gram balls of yarn. My prototype used one ball of pretty gray yarn plus leftover bits from other projects, which ended up giving a nice look, almost as if I had used a wildly variegated yarn. This bag was a b-day gift for my niece.
The next two bags were made with two balls of the same color, one of which was skeined up and over-dyed to make it variegated. Depending on how the variegated yarn is dyed, the effect can be subtle or vivid. The green was overlaid with blue and yellow, while the pink was overdyed more strongly with blue and red.
The next two bags were each started with a 100 gram ball of undyed yarn, which was split into a larger 70 gram skein (dyed a solid color) and a smaller 30 gram skein (painted with multiple colors). While the pattern balances the two colors by alternating which one is used for large one-color areas, these bags make all such areas the same color, which works better for the 70/30 color split. Changing the ratio changes the look. These two bags each use a different stripe pattern as well.
The first bag has a one row wide stripe, and uses a vertical one stitch wide stripe on the pocket. Instead of a knitted I-cord, this uses one yard of cord purchased from the craft store. This bag also has longer straps, so that it can function as a purse-sized backpack for a teen or adult.
The second uses stripes that change in number as it goes, with the variegated yarn stripes increasing in width as the solid color stripes decrease, and then reversing. Stripes range from 2 rows to 4 rows wide. The pocket matches up with the main backpack design. I made the buttonhole smaller on this bag, to go with this great flower button.
The original bag was navy and yellow. Someone commented that it resembled a bumble bee. This effect could be made more pronounced by using black and yellow.
