Have you ever bought a skein of hand dyed yarn for a One Skein Wonder, because you fell in love with the beautiful color composition? But after winding you felt a bit disappointed about how these colors looked on the ball of yarn and then that disappointment was as nothing compared to your disillusionment after knitting the first rows. What once was a wonderful arrangement of the colors you liked has now turned into a melange of indefinable hues. The magic that convinced you to buy that yarn in the first place has gone.

You might keep buying these skeins, enchanted by their creative charm, but now you’ve learned your lesson. You keep these skeins in your stash simply to look at them, too scared even to wind them, let alone knit with them.

If you have been there and done that, this will be like music to your ears. Those days are over because now you can turn almost any of these skeins into a wonderful Pool Party shawlette that will display all the colors you fell for without turning them into a muddy puddle.

It works with any hand dyed skein that is dip - dyed and not painted or sprayed. By this I mean skeins that show a limited number of segments in different colors neatly separated. Usually these skeins show one color on each side, while the colors in between are mirrored. This kind of skein will make your colors pool instead of mingle.

The yarn weight is not important at all. You can use everything from DK to Lace. If you go for fingering you will need only one skein of 3.5 oz/100g. You might need more if you use DK and less if you use lace. With lace it all depends on how lacey you would like the texture to be. To be on the safe side use a skein of 3.5 oz/100g if you prefer a tighter knit.

You will have the most control over the pooling process if you choose a yarn with four or five different colors. If the color sections are too short – this usually happens in skeins with more than 5 colors - it will be very hard to achieve the pooling effect. If the skein shows only two colors it is easy to make them pool, but the shawl won’t look as interesting as with four or five colors. You will find several pictures in the pattern that display the various results of my pooling tests.

You will also find photo tutorials for a lovely cable cast.on and the joining methods that are required for this pattern.

Happy knitting and enjoy the Pool Party

PS: All slip stitches in this pattern are slipped as if to purl with the yarn in front. You will receive an amended pattern soon.