Years ago, my chemistry lab partner and I doodled cartoons depicting the epic struggle between order and disorder. The heroine of our tale was Entropy Girl, the protector of order, with the superpower to sequester all particles in a room into a small area. Entropy Girl was in a constant struggle with Spontaneity Monster, the purveyor of disorder and source of randomness.

Today I no longer think about particles on a daily basis, nevertheless, I recently found myself recalling the battles of Entropy Girl and Spontaneity Monster while contemplating the use of a high contrast variegated skein. I seem to have a magnetic like attraction to variegated hand painted yarn with rich mesmerizing colors, at the same time, I sometimes struggle as to what to knit with such high contrast colors in order to retain the original attraction that I felt to the colors while separated within the whole skein. It is in these times that I feel as if I am in a battle with Spontaneity Monster, struggling to tame the disorder springing forth from my needles.

In designing this project I channeled my inner Entropy Girl to sequester each color in a variegated skein into two or three rows to create small-pooled stripes within a block (1.5”x1.5”). The project is constructed entirely of blocks, which are knitted perpendicular to the blocks lying beside them. The pooling of colors within the blocks works to control the disorder of a variegated skein by pooling the colors into bands to reflect the separation of colors in the original skein.
This project consists only of knitting with some decreases and increases. There is no purling, and you only have to weave in the start and end strands, and if making the cowl graft the ends together.