The Best Laid Plans: A Lesson in Colour

Long before I finished Lizard Ridge, I was looking at the leftover bits of the Noro Kureyon and thinking what a shame it would be to just throw them away. I came up with an ingenious plan for how to use them and began to plot out a brilliant blog post that would delight everyone who read it. Unfortunately, the best laid plans, as they say...

I was going to start out with this lovely photo of the leftover Kureyon, wound into little balls. As I was knitting the blanket, I found that oftentimes the loveliest colours would be left behind when the block was finished. It seemed like, because of the way the ball was wound (and because the block was knit with yarn from either end of the ball, working toward the middle) the colours that seemed to predominate were often positioned in such a way that the knitting was over before I got to them. It seemed a shame to not use them, but how could one use randomly coloured lengths of yarn in some sort of reasonable project?

I thought of this hat from Drops, which I've been wanting to make for a while. What if I figured out the length of yarn needed to do a round on the hat, and then measured out lengths of the Kureyon that are consistently one colour, and then arranged them in such a way that it would make a beautiful fair-isle design on a solid background? Wouldn't that be stunning hat, worthy of praise for how complicated and well-planned it was? So I proceeded to swatch for the hat with some Cascade 220 in my beloved Sparrow Heather colourway, and test what length of yarn would be sufficient to do a round. Then I sat down with my balls of Kureyon and began to measure out lengths of single colours. It made a lovely rainbow of little tiny skeins, and I was pretty excited about how this project was going to go.

Then I started to knit it. Obviously it was a bit of a pain, since I had so many ends -- each round of colour being a separate piece of yarn. But I carried on. Then I realized that I hadn't accounted for the increases in the length of a round (since the hat is cast on at 120 stitches but increases after the ribbing.) D'oh! I soldiered on for another round or two, thinking I might get away with it, without any lengths of colour being too short (since I had made them long enough for all 120 stitches, and the rows of fair isle weren't ever solid in colour but would have some background stitches, and therefore hopefully wouldn't ever take up all 120 stitches worth of yarn.) Then I decided I was being overly optimistic, and that it would be best to save myself the stress and worry. I elected to frog back to before the increases and try making it without the increases, since then I would be assured that the yarn would be long enough. Besides, I had tried on the initial swatch I had made with the Cascade 220 and decided it was big enough for my head. (Did I mention that the pattern is designed for DK weight and I am using worsted, just to add to the complications?)

So I began the colourwork again, this time on a steady 120 stitches. I got about halfway through the flower motif and realized that something wasn't working. The design wasn't very cohesive and it wasn't standing out from the background very well. This was probably partly because the colours varied from round to round, but I had a sneaking suspicion that it also had to do with the value of the various colours.

Colour value is a hard thing to pin down. You can't really eyeball it as easily as you might think, since the brightness or saturation of a colour might make it look like it's a different value than it really is. The best way I know of to check colour values is to look at it in black and white. Before photoshop, a person would probably have to use a photocopier for this sort of thing, but I just changed the photo I took of the hat into black and white to check it out.

As you can see, the values of most of the colours are pretty similar to the value of the background colour. There are a couple of ways I could have tried to fix this: I could reknit it with a new background colour (something very very light, like white, or very very dark, like black) would probably make the fair-isle stand out better than the Sparrow Heather background I chose. I went with option two: make a blog post about the failed experiment in fair-isle and knit the hat in two solid colours that have more contrasting values.

I picked up the leftover magenta from the blanket edging and frogged the hat back past the colourwork to start again. It seems to be working better this time. The lesson? Take a photo and check the values of your colours before beginning a fiddly project. Or live vicariously through my mistakes and stick to solid colours.

Unveiling Lizard Ridge

I know it took me too long to get photos of this up, and I apologize to those of you waiting with bated breath. I finished it after midnight on Saturday night, and just didn't manage time for photos in the following days, though I have been admiring it quite a bit, myself.


All the worrying about the widely varying colours came to naught, as I seemed to find a layout that made it work. One could attribute it to the fact that I chose the colours for the last 13 blocks consciously to try to tie it together, or to the fact that I managed a layout of the blocks that gave it a nice flow. Either way, I'm a genius and it looks great. I think there is a nice balance of bright colourful blocks to darker or neutral blocks, and I am very happy with how they play off one another. Can you find your favourite blocks in there? (Click for a bigger view.)

I went for a 5x5 layout, with 25 blocks total, rather than the pattern's recommended layout of 24 blocks in a 4x6 layout. Since each block is already a rectangle (roughly 10" x 12"), I thought that the 4x6 would give a skinnier, longer blanket. The 5x5 makes it a nice rectangle shape, and leaves it wide enough for two people to snuggle under.


As for the scalloped edging (would you ever have guessed magenta??) I had briefly considered coming up with some kind of knitted edging, rather than doing this crocheted one, but in the end, I couldn't imagine anything that would suit the blanket better. I used a larger crochet hook than she recommended, since the swatch I tried made pretty tight little scallops, and I wanted something a bit more relaxed. This crochet edging took forever, even though it's really only two rounds on the blanket. But so worth it, yes?

My HLM says that soon I'll be designing tour costumes for Aerosmith. Smartarse.

Sneak Peek

The seams are all sewn, so all that remains is to do the crochet edging tomorrow night. (Woo hoo! That's my kind of Saturday night partying!) I practiced my single crochet and double crochet this morning. I think I'm ready.

The seaming itself took forever -- I had planned to attach the squares to one another using a quick single-crochet, but that left Frankenstein's Monster-style stitches on the right side of the blanket. Not quite what I was looking for. So I ended up seaming the whole thing with mattress stitch: slower and more tedious, but ultimately much tidier. It also uses a lot less yarn than the single crochet would have. Thank goodness it's over.

While I don't have any finished photos to show off, today, I will give you a teaser: a blurry photo of the layout of squares, once I finalized it, but before I began the seaming.

It Begins

The Last of the Lizards

The final block is finally blocked. Now I just have to play with the arrangement until the yarn for seaming it arrives. This could get interesting.

And Then There Was One

Here is the second-to-last block for Lizard Ridge:

I am three-quarters of the way through the very last block, and have already ordered the yarn for seaming and edging. Care to guess what colour it will be?

I have also made some good progress on the Honeybee Cardi; it is now all in one piece and I am slowly moving up the yoke. Very happy with how it looks, so far. Soon, I'll get to pick out some buttons for a finishing touch.

Lastly, I am partway through the heel flap of the first Vampire Boyfriend sock, and am feeling good about how they are humming along.

Gosh, I feel so productive, all of a sudden.

Sick of Looking at These, Yet?

One of the great things about picking up my Lizard Ridge blanket again is that I have a lot of completed blocks to show off, so it makes for a lot of colourful blog posts.

Here's another one.

Turn a Square hat

The other day, one of my coworkers asked me for a hat, and as he's one of my favourite people, I couldn't deny him such a simple gift. But what hat to make? I went through Brooklyntweed's patterns, since I have successfully gifted more than one of his designs to important men in my life, in the past. One of his newer designs is ridiculously simple but beautiful (oh, and free): Turn a Square.


So I made my way to the LYS yesterday and picked up some yarn. Choosing colours was not an easy task, for this one. It needed to be manly, and suit the recipient, but still be lovely and striking to behold. The Noro Silk Garden was the easy part: only two colourways there were the least bit manly, and one of those was just neutral browns. The blue/black/lime colourway clearly won out, there (even though, alas, the lime never quite made it into the hat.) Choosing the Cascade 220 was harder: do I go with a grey or a blue or a green or something more contrasting? I considered and rejected many before finally choosing this one, called Sparrow Heather -- it's a lovely shade of greyish greenish brown. I have never liked how it looked online, but seeing it in my hand was different. And the more I knit with it, the more I am convinced that the colour is just so delicious that I need something more: like a warm and cozy cabley cardigan.

Other Stuff

So the vendors at Sock Summit were not only selling amazing yarn, but also great project bags (as well as other sundries.) I would say the most popular ones -- or at least the ones I saw people carrying around the most -- were ones that were shaped like a pyramid, with a loop at the top for hanging it on your wrist, to walk while you knit.


I walked by that booth many times, but never saw one made of fabric that I loved; in addition, I figured it would be ridiculously easy (and cheaper) to make one of my own. I was right. I found this little ladybug fabric when I went to buy curtain fabric for my house. In no time flat, I have an adorable little project bag for sock knitting. I even made an improvement (in my opinion) by adding a little gold grommet on the side, to let the yarn feed through there, rather than through the top of the zipper, where it might catch. I have gotten some funny comments on it -- it looks like a giant teabag, for example, or a piece of pizza. But it works like a charm and I like it.


What socks am I knitting inside that magic pyramid? I am working on some Tidelines socks, with some Socks that Rock that I had sitting around, and I really like the way the colours and the pattern are working together. It is just as good as I envisioned it would be. Maybe it's a little busy, but I think they look fantastic. This photo is outdated, by the way: I am past the heel and working on gusset decreases -- on the second sock.


Next up is this single ball of Noro Silk Garden that I dug out of the stash. Oh what will it become, you ask? You will never guess. Stay tuned.

Blogiversary

Believe it or not, today is my one-year blogiversary -- a year ago today I started this little collection of thoughts about and pictures of my various crafty efforts. It's something I've really come to love; the best part is getting feedback from people who have seen my meager though eager efforts and enjoyed them, in one way or another.

Here are a couple more little projects for you to peruse, recently completed:

As I mentioned a week or so ago, a Koolhaas hat for my HLM. He wanted a hat and I gave him a couple of options from brooklyntweed's catalogue of hats. He chose this one. I made it in a lovely grey, to compliment everything else he owns, which is primarily black. I had to upsize the pattern a bit, since he has a large head (much like myself.) He seems to like it.

Secondly, the completed Impulse-Buy Scarf.
I loooove this. I hardly even registered how tedious k1p1 ribbing is, since the changing colours were so engaging. My only frustration was that the balls of Noro Silk Garden had several knots. I wouldn't even care about that, except that the colours on either side of the knot were always disparate. Every knot meant that I had to find a part of the remaining ball of yarn that was the same colour as where I ended off, to keep the colour transitions smooth, and it was a bit of a chore to restart and reorganize several times. Oh well, it's all said and done, now, and I love it enough that any birthing pains were worthwhile.

Next up: the oft aforementioned Socks that Rock socks... I am well into the first leg and I am in love.

What Was I Thinking? a.k.a. What Happened to the Topographie Yoke?

So I found out yesterday that a new yarn store is opening just a few blocks from where I live (and also from where I work.) I was ridiculously overexcited about it, and today on my lunch I popped over (with a wonderful knitterly friend) to check it out. I knew in my soul that I wouldn't be able to resist buying some yarn (you know, to unselfishly show support for a fledgling business) so I went armed with cash and an open mind. The place is teeny weeny, but had a selection of nice yarns, a few needles and bags, and some pattern books. I thought about buying some of the delicious sock yarn (read: Noro Kureyon sock weight) but decided I have enough sock yarn in my stash (and I haven't even told you about my recently-acquired Socks that Rock, yet) so I grabbed a few balls of Noro Silk Garden, instead. See, Yarn Harlot spent a large part of November and December knitting up so many ribbed Noro scarves, and they were all pretty gorgeous. So I thought I'd take a crack at one. I picked up some Silk Garden in 205 (pinks/purples/browns) and 255 (purple/orange/the most luscious lime green you can imagine) and thought to myself: "After I finish my Topographie Yoke and my recently-acquired Socks that Rock socks, I will make a cute little scarf out of this lovely Silk Garden."

Later in the my work shift, I thought: "After I finish my Topographie Yoke, but before I make my recently-acquired Socks that Rock socks, I will make this cute little scarf that really can't wait, and besides, it's just a wee little scarf, so it will be quick."

By the time I got home from work, I thought: "I think I will just cast on for this cute little scarf and get a couple of rows of each colour done before I sit down to work on finishing my Topographie Yoke."

So I submit to you now the beginning of my cute little scarf, far past a couple of rows of each colour, which is so soft and gloriously shiny (I've never worked with Silk Garden before, so I really had no idea -- I am more used to the scratchy-and-not-shiny-but-also-pretty Noro Kureyon.)
So to the Yarn Harlot: I really understand now why you made so many of these. They are truly addictive and so so fabulous. And I haven't even gotten to the luscious lime green part yet.

Um... what Topographie Yoke??