Periodicity 3.3: Common Effects - Color Confetti (AKA fully-mixed fabric)

Color Confetti (aka fully-mixed fabric)
As with pooling, when the gauge, number of stitches across/around interacts just right (or wrong!) with a yarn's skein length and color repeat length, it produces a fabric where the colors are evenly mixed, with no pooling or flashing. The color is often flickery, and reminds me of confetti or sprinkles of color.  My Ravelry friend Nathalie/Skeincharmer calls it buckwheat: "Each grain is different shade of brown but together they produce a uniform, cohesive look."

Used under a Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 license.

Originally, I called this kind/sort of fabric "muddy," but a funny thing happened on the way to this article - one person's "muddy" was the next person's "rich and cohesive."  Over and over again, I saw examples on Ravelry, of projects the knitter who produced it called ugly, that I thought was gorgeous (and occasionally, it happened in the opposite direction).  And, as my Ravelry friend Jaya/Ermabom reminded me, mud-dyed fabrics and yarns are often rich, varying, gorgeous and highly underrated.  And another Ravelry friend Carole/Koiguki sent me a couple of videos on Japanese silk dying that uses mud to create a deep, rich, intensely dark fabric (here's one if you're interested).

So, I decided to call it “Color-Confetti”, because that’s what it most reminds me of - i.e. flickery mixtures of fully mixed color combinations with no apparent pooling.   They actually remind me a little of random-dot stereograms (but without the 3D part):

Random dot stereogram depicting a shark. Used under a Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 license

In my highly judgmental and utterly subjective opinion, I generally prefer pooled fabrics to color-confetti fabrics (although, there are always plenty of exceptions). The lovely colors in the skein sometimes seem to get lost in the “noise” when the colors are fully mixed.

However, there are always exceptions. Here are some exceptions that I think are gorgeous:

Used with permission. ©Susi/SusiJB 

Project: https://www.ravelry.com/projects/SusiJB/boden
Pattern: https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/boden

Used with permission. ©Kris/Kristoemily

Project: https://www.ravelry.com/projects/Kristoemily/wingspan
Pattern: https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/wingspan-2

Used with permission. © Jenny Sanders

Project: https://www.ravelry.com/projects/JennyXan/electricity
Pattern: https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/electricity

I've been trying to figure out why - even though I prefer pooled fabrics - I like the above examples. I think it's because the colors are bold enough to not get lost, or the melange of color just "works," which I know is not terribly helpful.

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