Deep Sea Wanderer Cast On

Today is cast on day for the Deep Sea Wanderer KAL. (KnitALong for the muggles out there.) Most of the action will be happening on the KAL thread on the Bear Ears ravelry group. But I wanted to share some tips over here too.

The recommended yarn for this pattern is Tosh DK. Tosh is a hand dyed yarn, which means that different skeins will often have some variation between them. As a result, sometime when switching from one skein to another, there will be a line, showing where the switch happened. There are two main ways to combat "The Line." The first way is blending.
To blend the yarn, you alternate skeins. For the sleeve below, I was knitting in the round. After each round, I switched between each skein. And to keep things uniform, I was careful to twist the two skeins the same direction each time I switched between the skeins. If you are knitting an item flat, you would typically switch skeins after every two rows, carrying the yarn up one side of the project.
The second method of hiding the difference in skeins is to be strategic in where you change skeins. For the sleeve, I didn't want to blend the yarn through the cuff, so I chose to knit the cuff using just one of the skeins. The cuff is darker and a little more blue, but it looks more natural in its placement.

For my Deep Sea Wanderer, I plan on using the second method: I'll be strategic in where my yarn changes happen. As you can see, one skein of Cousteau is a little lighter than the other. (I pencilled in which was which so I wouldn't mix it up later on.) Since the eye typically is drawn to lighter colors, I'll be using the lighter skein in the main portion of the pattern. So the order will be Chart 1: darker skein, Chart 2: lighter skein, Chart 3: darker skein. All going well, the difference in color will be unnoticeable.