Jen of Knitting Sutra recently wrote about a pooling issue she is having with a pair of socks for her MIL. Jen doesn’t like pooling, not even a little, and is having a contest to search for a pool-defying pattern for the offending yarn. Go over and check it out. I’ll wait.

You back? Anyway, I read the post, having my own opinion about pooling in variegated yarns, decided not to enter the contest, and promptly forgot about it. That is, until I ran into this

while working on the jaywalkers for my FIL. Ordinarily, I could care less if the colors pool. In fact, I think it can be attractive. But this… Well, it ain’t pretty, that’s for sure.

As I re-read Jen’s post today, I remembered being amazed that there could be a debate in the knit community about something like color pooling and I thought, “Why not do a survey?” So, what’s your opinion? The survey is over there in the side bar if you want to cast your vote.

As for my FIL’s sock, I’m feeling rather stumped. Should I frog it and try to start over at another point in the yarn’s stripe pattern? Will that make a difference? Should I use a different stitch pattern? I don’t know. I’ve never thought about how to defeat color pooling because I always thought it was kind of neat. But now…. Any ideas?