Finding Colors that Sing
Finding colors that sing.
Many color combinations work well together.
They’re beautiful, and full, and play off of each other.
Coexisting to make the world a more beautiful place.
Some color combinations sing.
They hum, and vibrate, and resonate.
They wibble, and warble, and trill.
They make your eyes light up and dance.
These are the combinations that are kinda-weird, but totally amazing.
Unexpected.
In the best possible way.
The combinations that transcend “that works.”
The combinations that wander into “that’s amazing” territory.
And set up camp.
What if, we take two steps past “it works?”
Two steps towards finding colors that sing.
it’s been a week of crafting mishaps
Each Wednesday, I post little snippets about what’s happening, and what I’m working on.
My crazy colorful sweater is coming along. It’s pretty slow going, and there was a bit of a hiccup when I realized I had vastly underestimated the yardage I needed (by about half) because I miscounted the number of rows I had to the inch. Luckily, I found more yarn, and I’m transitioning my colors now, so all should be ok. Fingers crossed.
And then I tried on my purple sweater and decided I hated how the neckline was sitting, so I cut it off, wound the yarn back up, and am going to re-knit it.
But at least I’m working off of the correct row count for this sweater.
So as sort of a consolation prize for the sweater mishaps, I cut the fabric for my first Archer button up shirt, and started sewing it together.
Unfortunately the fabric slipped, or wudged, or something while I was cutting (I mean, it’s not like I was being super careful) and the stripes don’t quite match at center front. But I’m making it anyway, because a) I want the shirt, and b) I’m planning for it to be an over-shirt anyway, so it’s not like I was going to wear it closed very often.
Once the shirt is all sewn together we’ll see how “off” the stripes actually are, and we’ll also see if I still don’t care.
At least there was a consolation prize for the consolation prize.
Two skeins of absolutely lovely yarn arrived from Toil & Trouble! I’m working up a new design in it, and I can’t wait to start knitting with it! Yay!
(But I’ve held off winding the second skein until my week of crafting mishaps comes to an end – just in case.)
PS. If you’re in the US have a fabulously wonderful Thanksgiving. And if you’re not in the US, have some pie anyway.
The Versio Sweater – hood, finishing, and making twisted cord
The pattern for Versio has a wide deep square collar, but instead of working the collar I followed Rililie’s notes on Ravelry about how to create a hood.
I was pleased enough with the way it came out to use it as a starting point for the hood I worked on my (Hopefully) Perfect Transitional Weather Sweater.
After the knitting was all done and the (mountain of) ends were woven in, I went back and duplicate stitched around the bottom of the V neck to tighten the loose stitches, and fix some wobbly ones.
It’s a little bulky in real life, but not too bad, and I don’t think it’ll be noticeable while I’m wearing it.
The bottom hem, and the hems at the wrists, are worked flat and turned under to create a tube that you’re supposed to thread cording through.
Since I used so many colors on my sweater, and the hems are worked in the yellow and black, I played around with a couple different color combinations.
I tried four combinations: yellow & black; all of the colors together (yellow & red & blue & black); yellow & red & blue; yellow & blue.
I ended up going with the yellow and blue. The yellow and black cording got lost, and the other combinations looked pretty harsh, against the yellow and black of the hem.
Making twisted cord is a lot of fun, and a little bit addicting.
You basically hold your strands of yarn together, insert a bunch of twist, fold the length in half, and let it twist back up on itself.
Indstructables, Stitch Diva Studios, and About.com-Knitting, all have good tutorials on how to make twisted cords.
The tutorials above suggest adding the twist by hand, or using a kitchen mixer, or a power drill – but I just used my spindle.
This morning’s very rainy weather, has me super excited to be so close to done with this sweater.
