That was what Mike said when I first explained to him the idea of pool­ing when using var­ie­gat­ed yarn. I thought it would make a nice catchy blog title! :D 

I was mak­ing a hand tow­el for a rel­a­tive as a gift, and bought this var­ie­gat­ed yarn because I liked the colour com­bi­na­tion. I start­ed with a chain of 40, so there are 39 stitch­es across. I used a 5.5 mm hook, and cro­chet moss stitch, using Bernat Hand­i­crafter yarn in Queen Ann’s Lace (large skein). And look! It start­ed mak­ing a plaid pattern!

This was com­plete­ly unin­ten­tion­al. I was even feel­ing a bit bad about it because when I read about planned pool­ing, I saw that it often takes peo­ple 5–6 tries before get­ting the pat­tern to work (which kind of deterred me from try­ing at all…), and here I am, la-di-da, out comes a plaid pat­tern (which is not per­fect but good enough for me!).

Which is why I want­ed to share all the details of what I did, maybe it will save some­one some time if you’re try­ing to make a sim­i­lar thing? The fin­ished tow­el came out to be 9″ wide.

But then I also read that the suc­cess of planned pool­ing depends on one’s ten­sion, where in the colour sec­tion one starts and the skein of yarn, so even if I try to do the exact same thing I may not get the same result anyway.

Def­i­nite­ly a pleas­ant surprise! 

Hap­py crafting!