Day 4: Color Review

What are your favourite colours for knitted or crocheted projects. Have a think about what colours you seem to favour when yarn shopping and crafting.

Only after writing this part of your post should you then actually look to see what colours you have used in your projects. Make a quick tally of what colours you have used in your projects over the past year and compare it to the colours you have written about. Compare this, in turn, to the colours that are most dominant in your yarn stash – do they correlate?

Now think back to your house animal - do the colours you have chosen relate to your animal in anyway - if you are in the house of peacock, for example, are your projects often multicoloured and bright?

As part of the Knit and Crochet Blog Week last year I did a post about my own color confusion.

This is what my stash looked like then ...

Today it looks more like this ...

...

...

...

Well, I decided to go to the gym instead of getting photos in the daylight (also it's raining/snowing here again today so it was a Debbie Downer of a day), so I don't know what my stash colorwheel looks like today, but here is the overall survey of colors from my exported Ravelry data.

[gallery columns="2" ids="3173,3174"]

So it looks like I've managed to make projects in a relative proportion to what I seem to buy.  Also, I'm surprised how proportional my stash is, color wise, I was expecting to see more purple and green.  These are two colors I naturally gravitate towards when I'm putting yarn in my shopping cart (even if I don't buy it). I would like to expand my palette but that may be more a question of tint and tone rather than hue as I gravitate towards mostly dark, fall/winter shades rather than fun, clear tones.

I wish I could find a way to tie it to my monkey-ness but honestly work has been insane (which is great) and I ended up spending way more of my evening than I would like to admit trying to get the excel file open and doing the data crunching.

So the story of color is that I totally buy on instinct and it seems I'm just as haphazard in using those colors in projects.  Also, as someone who knits accessories (rather than sweaters) I think I have a bit more freedom to be random with my colors because I really doesn't matter if the color "works" for you if you are wearing it as socks, and I do love me some wild colored socks.

FO: Baby Sophisticate Scarf

Buying yarn is a fun thing, you find a pattern you think you are going to love, you invest in the yarn and then it sits in your stash because either the pattern doesn't work for you or you don't really use knit bags or like wearing colorwork mittens.

That is how I ended up with a far too large stash of KnitPicks Palette.  It is amazing yarn for colorwork, however I don't enjoy colorwork, I spend too much emotional energy making sure my gauge isn't too tight or stressing over the fact that I use needles several millimeters larger than called for to make it work.

I was able to destash quite a bit of it to fellow Guild members back in February, however I still held onto some of it for some odd reason and now find myself drowning in yarn I'm not interested in using and not valuable enough to go to the effort to destash through Ravelry.

However, after washing this scarf, I think the yarn has found its calling, it is soft and drapey and the colors are just amazing.  I think colorwork is far more fun when I don't have to worry about gauge and floats.

That's not to say this scarf was without its challenges.  Because of the warp seperator I've been using on my loom I managed to shred one of my warp threads, way back at the back apron beam, and so I decided to cut the scarf off the loom early and sacrifice the rest of the warp to either future striped scarf or for the compost bin.  I should have narrowed the scarf and retied it to the front beam, but I was fairly discouraged and started cutting the warp off the back beam before I had really thought it through.  Oh well, live and learn.

Also, let me know how you like these pictures. I have been watching the Craftsy class Shoot It on product photography by Caro Sheridan of Split Yarn so I have been trying out her techniques. Tomorrow's FO post has my old photos, but the one on Friday has new pictures, and I'm pretty proud of those.

- Details -

Project Name: Baby Sophisticate Scarf

Draft: Grab and Go Bag by Liz Gipson in Weaving Mad Easy

Recipient:Baby Nico (who got the baby knits earlier this year)

Yarn: KnitPicks Palette in Bittersweet Heather and Salsa Heather

Modifications:

• Altered Sett: Modified from Worsted Weight to Fingering Weight yarn

New Skills:

• Two color weaving: This was my first time using two shuttles at the same time.  I'm still not sure I understand how to make my two selveges look the same, but I was really getting into the houndstooth flow when my warp snapped/shredded.
• Alternate warp stripes: To warp the houndstooth pattern I started each of my colors at opposite ends and direct warped alternate slots in both directions.  This worked wonderfully, and I ended up not having to cut too many ends and my warp didn't get funny from sliding off the apron rod from having too much tension on one side but not the other.

Feedback:

• Yarn: It's Palette, so the colors were amazing but because of my warp separator I had my one edge warp thread shred.  I should have been smarter when warping and now that I'm on my second scarf like this I haven't warped too close to the edge and used paper rather than plastic to separate my warp.
• Draft: Easy and straight forward, but I LOVE the effect.  I see many, many, many herringbone scarves and yardage in my future.

Re-Weave?: Totally, I already have my next one on the loom and a few inches into weave (although my currently garter mania and the Tour de Fleece are keeping me from really getting much weaving done).

FO: Sister Scarves

So a while back my sister Carla made plans to crochet herself an hexagon blanket, it didn't work out and while she managed to destash all the full balls, there was 500g of yarn remained in partial balls and the crocheted hexagons themselves.

With the yarn the way it was, in little butterflies from the frogged hexagons and larger bundles, it wasn't conducive to either knitting and crocheting, but would be perfect for weaving.  By using the larger balls for the warp and the little bundles for sections of weft, I could turn the yarn into something useful.

The two scarves were warped differently due to yarn restraints and the weft on the first is more regular (all the colors have an equal number of ends) and on the second I used up each of the colors in order and then used Chipmunk (which there was more of than any other color) to warp the full width.

For both of them I used the butterflies for weft, the first was entirely random, but for the second I was a bit more strategic alternating a large segment of Chipmunk with two and three random stripes in the other colors.

In the end I had two 3.5 yrd scarves and about 60g of yarn remaining.  I have plans for that last little bit, mostly a baby scarf for baby Nico who I made the baby sweaters for.

- Details -

Project Name: Sister Scarf and Return of Sister Scarf

Draft: Drunken Plaid by Green Bean's String Factory

Recipient: Carla of CarlaBeeCreations (and whomever she chooses to give the other one to).

Yarn: City Tweed DK in Chipmunk, Tabby, Snowshoe, Obsidian, Tahitian Pearl, Tarantella and Orca

Modifications:

• Each of the scarves was warped and weft differently

New Skills:

• Warp Stripes
• Weft Stripes

Feedback:

• Yarn: Wow, this yarn is so very, very soft!  I'm eager to get more of it to make Christmas scarves.
• Draft: Yep, this confirms it, I'm a genius.  And by genius I mean super lucky and Carla did such a great job with the color palette to start with, I really was set up for success.

Re-Weave?: For sure, these babies are a great, fun and quick way to make really nice looking gifts.

Day 1 - Colo(u)r Lovers

Note: I am participating in Knitting and Crochet Blog Week, so for the next seven days you will be working from prompts (which are given at the top of each post). To learn more, visit Eskimimi who has planned the event.

Colour is one of our greatest expressions of ourselves when we choose to knit or crochet, so how do you choose what colours you buy and crochet or knit with. Have a look through your stash and see if there is a predominance of one colour. Do the same with your finished projects - do they match? Do you love a rainbow of bright hues, or more subdued tones. How much attention do you pay to the original colour that a garment is knit in when you see a pattern? Tell readers about your love or confusion over colour.

Color is one of the things I suffer a bit of mild anxiety.  Not about enjoying colors, but about picking and pairing colors, I have no idea at time what goes with what and what goes with my skintone.  I just wear colors I like and have family who will sometimes lean over and mention that the top doesn't really, go, and not to wear it in future.

However, I took this post as a challenge to haul out my stash and put it in a color wheel and see what colors I have in my stash, and these are the results.

I'm not overly surprised to find out that green is the most prominent wedge of the wheel in my stash.  Green has always been my favorite color, from the mint green color of carpet I picked out at age 3, through to my favorite bags, and even my car, oh and my nickname for the blog.

Stretching from yellow-y grass green through to turquoise/tourmaline blue-greens, it is a great section from the colorwheel, that I LOVE.

However, purple seems to be coming in a close second, with coppery/tan/pinky groups coming a distant third.

What is most shocking is the absolute lack of blues in my stash.  I currently have a couple of skeins, most notably and beautifully, Frost from the TFA club last year.  And considering that blue is Tanis's favorite color to but dye and use, I haven't picked up any of her gorgeous skeins.

My finished projects seems to be the same with purples and greens making regular appearances amongst a range of other colors.

As far as tone, I seem to like clear tones, although heathers and "muddier" tones also make regular appearances.

As far as picking colors, I will be inspired by the original item, but more often than not I don't pick yarn for a specific project, I buy yarn for stash and pick from that stash for projects, so I am pairing a yarn that is fixed in color with a project. So while the original of the item may inspire me to a certain family of colors, rarely do I have the option of matching it exactly.

For me color is exciting and I am desperate to learn more about it, I would like to start dyeing yarn and maybe one day I will own a carder, which excites me very much.

So I am still very much confused about color, however that doesn't keep me from wanting to enjoy color.