Well, hello! Let’s see if I can’t get myself blogging more frequently by participating in this year’s Knitting and Crochet Blog Week, so let’s get started:
Day One: April 23. Colour Lovers
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.
I’ve gone through different color phases – when I was a teenager, blue was my favorite color, then red, then again blue, and lately I’ve had a hankering for green. In general though I like jewel tones. I just don’t think that pastel tones look that good on me – and jewel tones contrast nicely with my skin tone (Indian girl here). And then of course there’s the ubiquitous black – hey, it’s slimming, and it supplements any color nicely, to my mother’s dispair. Ok, dispair might be overdoing it, but she’s always after me to wear more color. That’s probably due to growing up in India – you’ll find Saris in all and any kind of shades – such as hot pink with almost neon green. Nothing you’d wear here, but there it looks fine. Huh. But in general, you’ll find that colors are such a huge part of India and its culture, especially during Holi, the festival of colors.
But back to the topic at hand. When it comes to my stash,I find that you’ll mostly find green, then blue, then red, and a few gorgeous yellow-gold skeins. I also have a rainbow of colors in acrylic mix blends for my toy knitting, but the remainder of my stash basically consists of solid or semi-solid colors. In fact, I really like yarns with subtle color shifts, like these two – they look gorgeous when knit up, but still have visual interest:
Sundara Fingering Merino Cashmere in French Lavender
Yarn Chef Minestrone in Lime Wedge
I’m not really a fan of crazy color combinations in my yarn – I never know what to knit with them. At the most I guess I could knit socks with them, but really, I don’t like clownbarf. I actually bought this very clownbarfy yarn (yes, I didn’t pay attention, I thought it would have longer color changes). Ultimately I toned it down by knitting up the yarn together with a strand of grey in a baby cardigan (the pattern is the offside wraplan pattern).
clownbarfiness, prior to being toned down - What was I thinking?
saved from clownbarfiness by pairing the yarn with grey fingering weight yarn, resulting in a sport weight thickness, and I got gauge!
Knitpicks Felici in Rainbow
But I do love self-stripey yarns – I mean, stripey socks, what’s not to love? My most adventurous striped sock weight yarn is this one. It’s destined to become just plain vanilla socks, to let the stripes shine. And of course I have a set of striped socks in Germany colors – Regia released these World Ball colors leading up to the 2010 FIFA World Cup (soccer), so I just had to have a pair of these. I’ll get plenty of use out of them – both at the 2012 European Championship (again soccer), or at this year’s Olympic Games, or … In fact, I still have to make at least two pairs of adult socks plus two pairs of kiddie socks before June 8 – that’s when UEFA Euro 12 starts. Oy.
Ok, this has been a long ramble about yarn, so I’ll keep the project part short. Interestingly enough, the projects that I’ve knit for myself are mostly in the blue, green, and inbetween tones, while a lot of the projects for others are in red-purple tones. That obviously reflects the color wishes of the recipient – one of which is my sister who likes purple – but still. Who would have thought? (If you’re interested in seeing more details on those projects, feel free to visit my Ravelry project page. Or if you know how to add links to the individual pictures in a mosaic, please let me know!)
Knitting, reading, photography, and maybe more 