While I adore the look of stranded and Fair Isle knitting, I am not such a big fan of the mechanics of the process. Enter “Marlisle”, a technique that provides a lot of the look with less of the fuss.

I am also totally in love with all of the lace weight mohair/silk blend yarns that have been steadily gaining in popularity. While I enjoy simply using them to subtly shift the look and feel of an overall fabric, it occurred to me that it could be fun to play with the possibilities of color-work. So here we are.

By knitting sometimes with the lace held double with the fingering weight and sometimes with the individual yarns separately, a super fun and subtle visual effect can be achieved with a minimum of fussy yarn management.

Combining a light color of light fingering weight yarn with a variegated lace mohair adds to the shifting colors that you can achieve. At times the color-work is strongly visible but when the variegation loses contrast with the fingering weight the color-work fades. Randomness is something that can be a challenge to create in knitting patterns and the variegated yarn does all the work for you in this case. Of course, if you use a solid color of mohair it will look super cool too! It just depends what look you desire.

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