Determining Low vs High Contrast Yarn for Colorwork
Although this might not be new knowledge to many of you, I thought I would share my trick for checking contrast in your yarn choices before you start knitting. I have personally run into the problem of using 2 yarns I thought would be so perfect together only to start knitting and find out you can barely tell there are 2 yarns being used. To save yourself a lot of heartache it is always recommended that you check the contrast of your yarns before you get to winding and knitting. Unless that is you are going for a low contrast look, which although isn’t for everyone if done correctly can be quiet stunning.
Low Contrast
Take for example these 2 yarns, to the naked eye they look different enough. The top yarn looks so bright in comparison to the bottom one. It seems almost impossible that the top yarn wouldn’t stand out beautifully against the bottom one. So surprise surprise when knitted up this turns out to be a low contrast example.
High Contrast
In this high contrast example, it is much more obvious that these yarns are not close color cousins. It is always good to double check because you never know, but as you can see they are very different and there is no need to worry about the pattern not standing out.
Since the human eye cannot pick up on these tonal differences, we require extra help with the use of a simple cell phone camera. By going into your camera settings you can change how your camera captures an image. I have a Samsung Ultra S21 but any cell phone with a camera has this as an option, on some phones it might be called B&W. By changing to grayscale, it allows our eyes to pick up on subtle tonal differences we normally wouldn’t be able to see. It can make a huge difference to see things in grayscale and can save you from heartache later on. Low contrast knitting isn’t always a bad thing, it depends on your personal taste. I have personally grown to really like it in certain motifs. The motif used in these examples is my True North Cowl and I think it looks amazing both in high and low contrast yarns.
