Over the course of the last few weeks, I came up with what I think is a completely new type of art yarn. I am calling it dimensional yarn. There’s thick yarn and thin yarn and thick-and-thin yarn but this is more like thin-to-thick yarn. The idea was to make yarn that went from very fine all the way up to bulky or super bulky all in one skein. This particular skein went from sport weight to super bulky. It was a total of 126 yards long and 3.9 ounces.

I tried it, and I liked it. Then I knit it up into a poncho for my daughter, and I loved it!

Here’s a photo of the poncho I made for my daughter:

The thing I love is that it goes from tight stitches at the top (the super bulky part) all the way to open and lacy at the bottom. Here’s a closeup:

As you can see, there’s definitely some thick and thin going on inside each thickness of yarn, especially at the bulky end.

I think the possibilities for this new kind of art yarn are nearly endless, but I mostly envision using it for knitting things like this poncho that I knit in the round or for triangle shawls–items that have a top and a bottom to show off the different sizes of yarn.

I used 24-inch size-19 circular needles to knit this, but next time I might even go up to size 25 or beyond. FYI, I used a free pattern from Nine Rubies for this project. Here’s a link to her pattern:

http://www.ninerubies.com/nine-rubies-chunky-mini-poncho.html

If you wanted something that showed off the variation in yarn but wanted to keep the same stitch tightness, you could also change needle sizes as you went.

In my next post, I’ll be making a tutorial showing how you can make this yarn yourself if you like. If you’d prefer to purchase it, I expect to be making several skeins for my shop in the next few weeks, starting with some from these lovely spring rainbow batts that I plan to start spinning today.

P.S. If you decide to make some of your own, I would just ask that you mention Purple Lamb as the original creator of this type of yarn.
Happy fiber artistry!