"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."
Until
yesterday when I actively started to think about the colour choices I
make – not only in my knitting and (occasional) crochet projects,
but also upon the walls and within the furnishings of my home – I
didn't realise that I have a very definite choice.
Don't
get me wrong; I have always known that colour is an important part of
my life – I'm someone who associates a particular colour with a
particular thing (green, for example, is my work colour, whilst blue
is my travelling colour... all my trench jumpers have been/are green,
my field-notes are written in green ink, my field notebooks are all
green, and my cars have all been blue). I accept that is a perhaps
slightly odd thing to be admitting to, but eh. Yet I don't use a lot
of green or blue in my yarn projects. Of course, I have blue
and green wool – but apart from a pastel green shade that I fell in
love with a few years ago because it's such a vibrant Spring
shade, it was all inherited from my Nain and/or Mother when they were
cleaning out their wool stashes a few years ago. Yarn projects to me,
therefore, seemingly do not represent work or travel – and that
actually makes me happy. The part of my brain which processes these
things appears to view yarn projects as relaxation!
The
other thing which I realised whilst contemplating this matter, is
that my colour choices do tend to be somewhat seasonal. In Spring, I
appear to knit more with delicate colours, pastel shades of yellows
and greens, pale pinks, lilacs and cream. In Summer, the shades
become more vibrant – darker yellows, vibrant oranges, bright
purples. In Autumn... well, it appears that Autumn is reserved for my
absolute favourite colour of all (hardly surprising, perhaps, is the
fact that Autumn is my favoured season anyway) – muted orange. That
particular shade of leaves fallen from the trees to clutter the
streets so that I might kick my way through them. I also use a lot of
burgundy during Autumn, it seems, which surprises me in one way
because that is a shade I tend to reserve for memories of school (my
Junior school cardigans were burgundy and I always had a new
hand-knit every September courtesy of my Nain). In Winter, my colours
drift towards more festive shades. Bizarrely enough, I don't remember
knitting with... say, pale yellow in Summer, or muted orange in
Spring. I'm not saying that it hasn't happened, simply that I don't
remember it.
Do
I prefer solid shades of wool, or varigated? Whilst The Boy would
love me to say “varigated”, I have to confess that I do prefer
solids which I can mix together and determine precisely where
stripes, or polka dots or even a gingham pattern are going to emerge
in a project. I have a very definite image in my mind's eye as to
what something should look like even before I pick up my needles or
hook, and I work to that mental image as closely as I feasibly can.
Dolls clothes are knitted first because the outfit is what I “see”
before ever the doll itself comes into the picture. And yet, I also
do a lot of hand-dying – and that is always varigated, if only
because I like to see how the colours pool together both during the
dying process and whilst being knitted. Last year, I dyed a batch of
50pc Merino/50pc silk 4ply yarn for my mother in her favourite
colours of purple and green – and the scarf that erupted from her
needles literally zings with the combined shades. For myself,
I also dyed a hank of 4ply in shades of... yep, orange and yellow...
and for my son's scarf, allowed him to mix blues and greens together.
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