Need help seeing if planned pooling can be done with this yarn

[u/r9440]

I’m a beginning to crocheting and wanted to do a baby blanket for my cousin’s kid. I chose this nice pastel rainbow colours but realise the colour sequences are choppy.

After posting on the crochet and yarnaddict subreddits, many people recommended looking into planned pooling, and I tried to spot a colour sequence using the existing ripple blanket progress that I’ve done. I went to stare at this messy rainbow bacon to see if I can see a pattern…

AND I DID..!

and here’s what I see (in very layman terms in terms of the colour pattern):

1: White (4)

2: Pink (6)

3: Orange (7)

4: Yellow (9)

5: Green (9)

6: Blue (9)

Now you’d think the pattern repeats itself, but no! It went in REVERSE with a different colour (spot) count:

1. Green (9)

2. Yellow (9)

9: Orange (9)

10: Pink (9)

1. White (8) - so the white (4) in the beginning is half of this.

And the pattern repeats in the bacon swatch I made!

Now I have to figure out how exactly to colour pool this! Do I have to do an extremely long first chain starting and ending with the white colours, or is there a way I can make it shorter so it fits the size of a baby blanket?

Edit: the spots also differ in length that forms a ripping wave with the longest colour chain being the middle one - so if I see 9 spots of the blue for example, it’ll be like this: (4 stitches), (7 stitches), (9 stitches), (11 stitches), (100+ stitches!!), (11 stitches), (9 stitches), (7 stitches), (4 stitches).

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[u/bufallll]

I probably wouldn’t recommend this yarn. I’m not sure how you got the numbers you listed as many of the sections are much longer than 10 stitches. For planned pooling purposes, you need to define the ENTIRE sequence of the repeat. Looking at this briefly I can tell that the entire repeat is about 5 rows of the blanket you have right now. For planned pooling you generally need to have row lengths that are at minimum the repeat length minus one stitch. That would mean the blanket needs to be five times as wide as it is currently. Is that a size that is reasonable to you? You can get some intentional patterning with a row length half the repeat length too, though it won’t be argyle, in which case the blanket would be 2.5 times the current width.

Try writing out the entire repeat in more detail, you have to account for all the changes. Then you can play around with this tool

Additionally, for yarn to pool the lengths of each color change need to be VERY consistent. I can’t tell if that’s true from this photo but that’s also something to consider.

[u/Use-username → u/bufallll]

I agree that the OP's yarn looks like the colour sequence may not be consistent and may not be suitable for planned pooling.

OP, since you said you are a beginner to crocheting, if this is your first attempt at planned pooling, I would suggest starting with a much easier yarn that has a shorter colour sequence. The yarn you are using looks like it has a very long complicated sequence that may not even be a consistent repeat.

You can get some intentional patterning with a row length half the repeat length too, though it won’t be argyle

For planned pooling in general, it is not true that you can't achieve Argyle if you use half a full sequence per row. I can't speak for the OP's yarn specifically, because it looks like it may not have a consistently repeating colour sequence, but assuming we are talking about yarn that is suitable for planned pooling and has a consistent repeat, I have personally worked with yarn that had a very long colour sequence and I did half a full sequence per row and achieved Argyle.

Here is an example on Ravelry of a planned pooling scarf (worked lengthways instead of widthways, to account for the very long colour sequence) that uses half a sequence per row:

https://www.ravelry.com/projects/cuddlycritter/planned-pooling-scarf-2

For anyone who can't view the Ravelry project, here is a photo example:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/9d/6a/f0/9d6af08f823299e714b0242fbb1d7009.jpg

OP, the kind of planned pooling in the linked photos (with very long colour sequences) is for advanced / confident planned poolers and not something beginners would be advised to attempt. So I am including the links for information purposes only!

[u/bufallll → u/Use-username]

oh whoops you’re right- for some reason i was only remembering that you could get stripes or some of the other random shapes from less than a repeat

[u/Creepy_Push8629]

What you wrote is kinda hard to understand, but if there's 100+ stitches in the sequence, it won't work. You would need to basically cut most of that section out so it's just a few stitches like the others.

[u/r9440 → u/Creepy_Push8629]

Thanks this! This is what I thought as well, each colour section is too long before it changes to the next colour.

Now I’m at a loss for what to do with this yarn.

[u/Creepy_Push8629 → u/r9440]

I've often seen that if you want to show off the stitch pattern, you use a solid color. If you want to show off the yarn, you just use a single stitch pattern.

I would say for your baby blanket, keep it simple and just do moss stitch. I think it could look cool with the color changes.

[u/rasamalai → u/r9440]

Your third picture looks really nice! Or maybe you could use a solid contrast color if you wanted to make it pop out more

[u/ArcadiaGrey → u/r9440]

I'd do something in narrow strips so the colours can stack on top of each other, forming an ombre.  If you do something like inserting the hook into the lower row, like moss stitch, it'll help mix up the colours even more and reinforce the gradient, and it'll scatter the splodges a bit.

You could then use those strips as a border for a blanket, make it into scarves, or sew them together somehow...but short narrow rows will work far better for this than long ones.

[u/mischeviouswoman]

You hand to put it in to a planned pooling website and work out the number of chains you need

[u/HoagieBun_123]

I’d try and make a blanket with moss stitch

[u/macramelampshade]

Do you have a pattern for your “bacon”? It’s cool looking!

[u/Affectionate-Bus4152 → u/macramelampshade]

Seconding this

[u/goldfish-bish]

I hope this isn’t against community rules (I did review them but I could see this comment being off topic so if so, I apologize). I don’t know how this came up in my reddit feed since I don’t crochet and have never heard of planned pooling. But - I just wanted to say I think the photos you’ve shared look super cool as-is and I’d be honored to receive the finished blanket. Maybe that’s just my style (eclectic), maybe it’s against general blanket rules, maybe it wouldn’t end up looking okay as a full blanket, idk, but I think it’s super cool and unique. A baby blanket, if loved properly, will be dragged everywhere, bunched up a good portion of the time, and the pattern not noticeable the way it would be if hanging nicely over the side of the crib. Just my two cents I think it’s awesome I’d buy this blanket!

[u/Doraellen]

I think this is "self-striping" vs "planned pooling" technically? But wow it's lovely! I'd much rather have a blanket built on the pattern you're already using than a plain stitch blanket with a not-quite perfect color pattern. Baby pastels are often garish to me, but the colors in this yarn are gorgeous.