how to.. match the carpet and drapes

My house is a bit messier than I think it should be. When I get dressed in the mornings, given my job involves dyes and a lot of heavy lifting, what I wear is functional rather than pretty. My socks tend towards not matching more often than not, though for that I blame my dog who is a notorious sock thief.

But having worked with gradient yarns for over 10 years, one thing that I'm a stickler about is that the sleeves and body of a sweater knit with a gradient match up. Before I started Freia Yarns I worked with a few mass-produced self striping yarns which would notoriously have a break in the ball somewhere and a color jump. I would dig through the ball pulling out yards of yarn to match the established color sequence. I think anything less, unless hidden by the pattern of the piece, would have looked sloppy. 

That's all well and good with a scarf or shawl, but what do you do with a sweater? Here are some tips:

A pieced cardigan
For this you would have (generally) two fronts, two sleeves and a back piece. Each of the fronts is probably close in stitch count to the sleeves so those are easy enough to come pretty close. But your back piece is twice as wide as each front - the simple trick here is to work two balls at a time, alternating one row from each ball. By doing this you are extending the length of the gradient so matching it proportionately with the narrower pieces.

A top-down sweater
This one is also not too hard to solve. If you were being very particular the best bet would be to alternate two balls from the very beginning of the neck cast-on. As you work the yoke and the sweater gets wider, you might want to even bring in a 3rd ball, alternating each ball every round.  When separating the body from the sleeves it might be an idea to work one of the sleeves first (using just one ball) to get a sense of how fast the gradient shifts. You will probably need to dig around in a fresh ball to match up the colors to the yoke. Once the sleeve is done, when you work the body you can judge based on your stitch count and any patterning if you would need 4 or 3 balls for the body if you'd like them to come close to the color shift on the sleeves. Lastly repeat what you did for the first sleeve on the 2nd one. 

A bottom-up sweater
Many bottom-up sweater patterns will suggest that you begin with the body, however in this case I'd recommend beginning with at least one sleeve, again to get a sense of how fast the gradient shifts.  The body will in all likelihood have approximately 3 or 4 times the number of stitches as the sleeve - based on that you can decide how many balls to use for the body. Three times the number of stitches, you'd want 3 balls. It can be a bit of a juggling act but it's not terribly difficult and the end result is very much worth the little bit of extra work. 

I'm currently working on Spark by Andrea Mowry. I have knit most of the first sleeve and have held off the last couple of inches to see ​how the body plays out as I get close to the join at the underarm. I'm using three balls of gradient in the body which will shift faster than the sleeve but the body is on the shorter side so I'm thinking they should be a pretty good match by the time they meet. 
As I get closer I can modify the pace of the gradient as needed by bringing in or subtracting a ball. Once the sleeves and body are joined I will probably cut back to alternating just 2 balls to finish it up, this will speed up the color shift a bit but the change within the piece will be cohesive.
I will report back once I have the cardigan done, this is a fun sweater and the simple fairisle pattern suits the gradient well.

Project Tech Specs:
Yarn: Freia Merino Silk Worsted in Canyon and Ecru. This yarn is a little hard to find (your LYS might be able to order it for you), but you can easily sub in our regular wool Ombré Worsted (which is more widely available)

​I hope you've found this useful - ask any questions you might have in the comments below and I'll do my best to answer.