This May, we’re exploring marling. Don’t be afraid if you’re a beginner and have no idea what marling is. By the end of this blog post you will.
If you’re interested in learning a technique that will help you use up your stash while also playing with colour, you’re in the perfect place.
What is Marling?
Marling is the technique of using two different coloured yarns at the same time. When you work them together, the colours blend and can create exciting, unexpected shades that you couldn’t find otherwise.
Marling can expand your palette and add depth to your projects. If you marled together each of our 30 solid colours, you’d have 900 colour options. Nine hundred!
That’s a bit much for a blog post, so we’ll start with just five solid colours that show you how it works.
Creating the Swatch Matrix
To show you the possibilities we’ve used images from Bianca of @olala.knitworks, with her permission of course. She demonstrated marling beautifully using our very own Cowgirlblues yarn in Merino Twist and Kidsilk.
Here’s what Bianca did. She started with 5 Cowgirlblues colours in Merino Twist and Kidsilk: Charcoal, Sage, Celadon, Faded Rose, and Terracotta.
(The same colours in each of these yarn bases.)
To get started she knit 5 swatches, see below. Each Merino Twist colour is held together with the same colour in Kidsilk.
Then she systematically filled in the rest of the matrix. For the top row, she took the Kidsilk in Charcoal (top right ball) and paired it with the other colours in Merino Twist (the ones along the bottom row). Then she repeated this process working along each row.
She knit 25 swatches in total to demonstrate all the colour combinations you can make from just 5 of our shades.
Here’s the swatch matrix all filled in. Isn’t it incredible how much colour variation you can get from just five shades?
Getting Started with Marling
The technique is a great solution if you can’t quite find the perfect shade you’re looking for. You can blend two similar coloured yarns (like Terracotta and Faded Rose below) to get more colour options.
Working with similar colours is an excellent place to start for your first attempt. Especially if you want to use up yarns in your stash. First organise your yarn options by colour. Then pick two in the same colour family. You can’t go wrong.
If you’d like some more inspiration, find Bianca’s full project at @olala.knitworks. Have a slow look, zoom in, and see which combinations speak to you.
Also have a look at the Reagan Cardigan Project Bundle, and the Ranunculus Project Bundle. Both of these are marled, and we’ll be talking more about marling with multicolours next week.
You can find all the colours Bianca used (and many more) on our website. And if you want to talk through your pairing – a stash skein you’re trying to match or combination you’re unsure of – drop us a message or pop into our studio shop in Maitland, Cape Town.