Knit Picks Chroma Yarn Review

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Who wants to ogle some beautiful yarn with me? I couldn’t resist the gorgeous new line of Knit Picks Chroma yarn colors so I snagged a few balls and thought I’d share a review of this stunning yarn with you. Ready, set, ogle:

TY for the beautiful photo, Knit Picks!! (Side note: who else lives for their catalog???)

Knit Picks Chroma is known for its gorgeous shifting color transitions and delicate single-ply texture. It reminds me a lot of Noro Silk Garden, but it’s about half the price and super easy-care. Instead of silk and mohair, Chroma is 70% superwash wool and 30% nylon, meaning it can take a ride through the washer and dryer and survive to tell the tale! As someone who gifts most of what I knit, machine-washability is something I need in a yarn. And, as long as I’m comparing Chroma to Noro and other popular single-plys, I’ll also add that I’ve found Chroma to be a stronger yarn that won’t break if you knit with firm tension (IYKYK).

Chroma comes in worsted and fingering weights in generous 100g balls. Some of the color shifts are really vibrant and high-contrast, like Fiona, and some are more gentle and monochromatic, like Frosted Window or Blush & Bashful.

The color transitions in Chroma will do all the hard work for you in an entrelac pattern or a colorwork technique like fair isle or mosaic knitting. I’m using the color Fiona to knit up an old-school Knitty Quant. I’m still working on it, but check out this WIP pic below! (BTW, entrelac isn’t nearly as difficult as it looks and you can knit up one of these in a weekend if you are looking for a unique last-minute gift.)

I plan to use the other skeins I bought to knit up one of the patterns Knit Picks released to accompany this yarn in their Rewind eBook – the Links Hat – which is written for either weight: worsted or fingering. The Links Hat uses mosaic knitting which is great for colorwork beginners or anyone looking for some mindless TV knitting. Unlike fair isle, mosaic patterns only have you work with one strand of yarn per row… easy-peasy!

Chroma comes in the color-transitioning yarn and in three neutral solids to use for contrasting colors: black, grey, and bare. The Links Hat I plan to knit mixes a solid Chroma and a colored Chroma, but if I go with the fingering weight version, I’ll have to mix the colored Chroma with some solid Stroll, cuz that’s all I have.

WAIT, WHAT DID SHE JUST SAY?? She’s going to mix a single-ply yarn with a plied yarn?

YEP! (But don’t worry, I swatched!)

If I was intentionally buying yarn for a specific project, I wouldn’t choose to mix such different yarns. But, sometimes a stash-dive requires a daring mix & match! (Or, maybe you just want to pair the colored Chroma with a non-neutral solid. #YOLO!) Here’s the scoop on mixing yarns:

I did a striped swatch of a Chroma Color with a Chroma Solid and then one with a Chroma Color and a plied solid from my stash. (Swish Worsted, if you’re curious.) The full Chroma swatch is on the left and the mixed one is on the right (and zoomed in on the closeup box).

I know it’s hard to tell in this photo, but the full Chroma swatch has a uniform sheen and that beautiful halo effect across the whole piece. The yarns in the mixed swatch catch the light differently. If you look in the zoomed portion of my photo, you can see the difference in texture between the yarns, but, TBH, you’d probably only notice it if you knew what you were looking for. If I were working stripes with one big section of the plied yarn next to one big section of the single-ply, I wouldn’t mix them because I know the way the light catches the fibers differently would bug me. But I’m confident that the yarns would blend just fine in a mosaic piece, which is already more textured by nature.

As always, if you mix fibers, please knit a swatch and give it a good wash and dry in the same manner you’d wash the final piece. Sometimes fibers seem to mix okay fresh off the skein, but they don’t get along once you add soap and water.

Long post! 😬Thanks for hanging in there with me! What’s your take on Chroma? Do you have a favorite pattern for color-shifting yarns? Share in the comments, please!