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Star Blends
by Phreadde Davis

These socks were made by blending two colors along with black and white to produce a set of over twenty different colored stripes. To blend, I used super wash Merino from The Black Lamb . Since I knew I was making socks, I used a drum carder to make very small batts of about ½ oz each. I wanted one stripe for each color for each sock. I made a 3-ply by chain or Navajo plying a thin single to create a suitable 3-ply sock weight yarn. Any fiber would work for these blends as long as you had two colors plus black and white of the same fiber.

Blend charts

Before going into how to blend for these socks, let's talk about how to read a blend chart.

First a simple blend from black to white:

You have pure black and pure white on the ends. The middle is a 1 to 1 ratio of black and white or 50/50 ratio. I write this as BW11. In the other two slots, you take the middle BW11 and mix it evenly with either black or white.

Another way to show the mix is to assign numbers as in this 7 grade chart.

This lets you know exactly how many parts you have in each section and assumes that you want the same amount of each blend produced. So B4 W1 gives 5 parts total and B2.5 W2.5 gives the same.

Ok, let's look at color. Naming can be a problem when describing blends. The chart of colors we are trying to achieve looks like this:

Scary, isn't it? Let's break it down into simple levels.

Level 1

For my mix, I am using two colors I didn't really care for to see if I get anything I like. I recommend using two colors that are not very near on the color wheel.

I used an olive green and pinkish purple called Green and Purple for these charts. The first blend is simple, Green and Purple at a 1 to 1 ratio or 50% Green and 50% Purple. GP11. Now make a big batch of this since you will be using it 9 more times in the following mixes.

Level 2

Now we will mix GP11 and our 4 base colors of Green, Purple, Black and White. Make
a 1:1 (50/50) mix of each. These are called A, B, C, and D on the chart. Make doubles of A & C as we will use these in level 5 below.

Level 3

This level is simple. Take Green and mix it with Black 1:1. Then take Green and mix it with White 1:1. Take Purple and mix it with Black 1:1. Then take Purple and mix it with White 1:1. You get w,x,y and z on the chart. Make extra as we use these for the next level too.

Level 4

Go back and get some GP11 from level one and mix it with each mix from level 3 at a 1:1 mix. For example, GP11 + w=winter (see how I was running out of names here?)

Level 5

On this level, I only used some mixes from level two, namely A & C. These I mixed with both Green and Purple. So Green + A = joe. Though I only used A & C, you could also use B & D, but I just ran out of steam.

Conclusion

At each level, the chart and formulas looked formidable, but were simple to execute as long as I stuck to the chart. I was surprised and delighted to get so many colors that my eye could distinguish. Wouldn't this be a great application to use for those subtle Fair Isle blendings?

While I got 17 blends plus solid Green, Purple, Black and White, I did not exhaust the possibilities of these colors by far. In fact, I had to pick and choose for the socks or they would have been up to my knees.

Feel free to use my complete calc chart , including exact ratios so you can duplicate any color. It is easy to reproduce any of the mixes by using fiber weight and this chart. And if you do the experiment using some colors other than green and purple, I would be happy to see them and post them on my blog.