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Thursday 25 April 2013

Day Four: Colour 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?


I like bright colours, I love pinks, turquoises, lime greens and I especially like them all together. However, I know without even looking that my stash does not reflect this at all.  This is very much a choice and something I have given a lot of thought to.  When I buy clothes  I do tend to buy colours and the brighter the better. 
Stripes patterns and great big details are all welcome in my wardrobe and as a result good number of my clothes do not go together very well.  So, in the interests of wearability I tend to keep the colours of my knits fairly conservative.  If I'm going to spend a lot of time and effort hand knitting a garment I'm going to want to get a lot of wear out of it and therefore a bright pink and orange striped cardigan is not going to be a winner.
There are exceptions to this rule in the form of sock yarn and my own handspun.  As far as I am concerned socks do not need to match anything as they are largely hidden so I like them to be kind of loud and/or variegated or stripey.  I occasionally buy solid colours so that I can knit socks with stitch patterns that may get lost in a busier colourway.  It is with my handspun that my bee-like tendencies manifest themselves the most.  Spinning solids bores me rigid, but I'm finding it hard to know what to knit with my growing collection of single skeins in crazy colours.  I really want to spin enough yarn for a larger project in sensible colours but the lure of things like this is almost irresistible.
My solution has been to implement a buddy system where I choose two fibres, one interesting and one plain and I spin a bobbin of one followed by a bobbin of the other until they are both finished and can be plied one after the other.  Not only is this a way of controlling my urge to flit from project to project, I've found that is actually spurring me on as I spin faster to finish one bobbin and get on to the next.
So, now it's finally time to have a look at the colours in my stash.  Seeing as I was making all those lovely charts about my stash the other day, I thought I'd make just one more.  Voila

7 comments:

pinkundine said...

I feel exactly the same abut socks - they indulge my love of garish colours so I can make more sensible choices for clothing ;)

Gracey is not my name.... said...

I love multi-colored sock yarn! and I love the yarn you pictured...beautiful!

Karen said...

I love wild crazy bright socks too!

Renee Anne said...

I have far too much sock yarn and almost all of it is variegated and multi-colored and bright :)

bekswhoknits said...

I love the way we all have strategies to curb our natural tendencies.

I have a thing for bright sock yarn, although my current stash doesn't say so, my knitted socks do.

Alittlebitsheepish said...

I am so glad to have found lots of other people who make bright socks.
I would love to see what you make with your handspun as I have the exact same problem- shortish lengths of random colours. I am thinking about a yoked sweater with a bright handspun yoke and a grey/neutral body.

Hanrahan said...

That's a brilliant idea! I've been thinking along similar lines and considering a plain raglan sweater with stripy sleeves.