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Choose Ranges for Your Yarn

How ranges work, why the numbers repeat, and how to make them fit the colors you have.

Ranges decide which color each day gets. Here's how to read them, and how to shape them around the yarn you have.

How Ranges Work

Each color in the gauge has a range beside it, From → To. With 30 → 25, a day that's 27° gets that color. Which temperature counts, the day's high, average or low, is chosen in the preview's settings.

The numbers repeat on purpose: 30 → 25, then 25 → 20. By default a range includes its first number but not its last, so 25° goes in 25 → 20, never in both. A sentence above the ranges says how yours work.

Use Every Color About Equally

Good for buying the same amount of each yarn. Most days are mild, so with equal-sized ranges the middle colors get used far more than the ends.

  1. Press Ranges above the colors.
  2. Under Auto ranges, choose Equal days, by the temperature your preview uses (High, Average or Low).

To check, look beside each color: it shows its number of days and its share of the blanket (Days in ranges, in View).

The Temperature Gauge with Ranges: Auto and View, and the sentence About the same number of high temperature days in each range. Each of ten colors shows its range, from 34° → 25° down to 7° → 1°, and its number of high, average and low days with their share of the blanket.
Days in ranges, shown beside each color.

Round Steps, Like Every 5°

Easy to read off a thermometer, and the same from year to year.

  1. Press Ranges, then Manual steps…
  2. Fill in Every (like 5) and From (where the first range starts, like 35).
  3. Press Save.

Your hottest and coldest days need a range too. If either end is left out, add a color, or choose a bigger step.

Fit the Ranges to the Yarn You Have

Have 9 colors? Choose 9 Colors in the menu below the gauge. Then change any range by hand:

  1. Press a range's number.
  2. Type the new number, and press Save.

With Linked ranges on (in the Ranges menu), the next range moves with it, so no days are left out. The Ranges button now says Edited; choosing Auto ranges or Manual steps again replaces your edits (Undo brings them back).

Ranges That Don't Repeat (0 → 9, 10 → 19)

Some patterns write ranges this way. To match one:

  1. Press Ranges, and set Each range includes to Both From and To.
  2. Turn off Linked ranges, and type each range.

Mind the gaps: a day of 9.5° fits neither 0 → 9 nor 10 → 19. Use decimals to cover them, like 0 → 9.99 and 10 → 19.99. To check, add up the days beside the colors: they should come to the days in your project.

If Something Goes Wrong

My ranges changed by themselves

Auto ranges are remade when the weather or the number of colors changes. To keep them, edit one range (the button says Edited), or use Manual steps.

A day is in two ranges

It takes the color of the first one, the higher one in the list. Change the ends so they don't overlap.

The ranges go the wrong way

Choose Direction in the Ranges menu: High to low or Low to high.

More Detail

  • Gauges & Ranges: Gauges, their ranges, and every option in the Ranges menu, explained.
  • Colors & Yarn: Getting colors, choosing yarn colorways, and sorting, pasting and exporting them.
  • Preview: Preview patterns, their settings, your progress, and seasons.