Color in Fair Isle class

I was fortunate at Stitches West to be able to take the “Color in Fair Isle: from Inspiration to Motif” class taught by Janine Bajus, whose book, The Joy of Color, I bought a few years ago and have admired ever since. It hasn’t gone beyond admiration because too much to make, so little time (isn’t that always the way?).

Homework was to bring (an) inspiration source(s). My self-assigned homework was a gauge swatch with Shetland wool. I worked this with Jamieson & Smith 2-Ply Jumper Weight 2 weeks before SW:

Well, I guess I come out as a loose knitter with this Shetland yarn. For the lower part I used 3.0 mm needles and for the top part 2.5 mm. The 2.5 gives me a nicer fabric and, bonus!, the stitch gauge I need to knit the Bougainvillea Vest kit I bought at SW 3 years ago (although nowhere near the row gauge, harumph, and that pattern suggests 3.25 mm). On to class!

On day 1, you chose an inspiration and used the Ultimate 3-in-1 Color Tool by Joen Wolfrom to select a few likely color families. My source is a photo I took of a painting by artist Eyvind Earle that hung at the Disney Family Museum. I ended up using page 4 for spring greens, which range from pale to bright to very dark, and page 21 for oranges as my main color families. The greens in the painting really lean spring and not green greens; my eye sees blue greens in the photo but the Color Tool disagrees. Janine explained that brown doesn’t have its own page because brown is always a blend of other colors, and she was right. I found the brown yarns in class belonged to their color family pages.

You then set the photo aside and went to the big yarn playpen containing 200+ colors of Jamieson’s Spindrift with only the Color Tool in hand to gather together colors from the pages you chose. The tool obviously does not have every possible shade of every color family, but holding the tool above the pile of yarns, yarns just jumped into my field of vision. It was so automatic and a little eerie. Choosing yarns took longer than I thought it would, up to the lunch break and a bit of time afterward. The goal was to end up with about 20 colors. Here are my choices next to the source photo.

In the afternoon of day 1, we cast on for our speed swatches, the striped bit in the photo below. This swatch is to ensure your chosen colors have enough contrast to give you strongly visible diagonal lines between the groups. My diagonal lines worked out well and I was happy with all but the beige. Others in the class had to do more revising and longer swatches and that is OK.

Day 2 began with some more work on speed swatches and then launching into motif swatches. Decision: which group of colors to use as background and which as pattern? I settled on orange as background and green as pattern. Further decision: which pop color(s) to use? I agreed with Janine in her critique that the bright yellow I chose interrupts the eye from seeing the motif’s pattern against background. She suggested I swap the position of the pop color in that row — use the yellow as background instead of as pattern color — so I worked the second motif that way without ripping so I could compare them.

It is still not quite right to my eye although I really like it from a distance. I over-embroidered 4 or 5 other colors on both rows during class to see what might work and none really did. Earle used that blue I pulled and it didn’t look right in the swatch. I am not worried; there are lots of shades of yellow and other colors to try, plus I can try a different motif or two because it might just be this motif that doesn’t work. I also want to add the beige (actually an orange) from the speed swatch back in for motif swatching because in sunlight instead of classroom fluorescents, it reads differently.

I deliberately chose an inspiration in colors I do not normally work with, hoping that breaking from the usual would prevent my eyes from drifting to the shades I like best rather than allowing the class curriculum to do its job. I think I succeeded — I like my swatch.

It is not much knitting to show for 12 hours of class, and gads, was I tired. Two-day classes always do me in.

It’s hard to quantify what all I learned. Janine is a knowledgeable, kind, and well-practiced colorwork teacher so if this topic interests you, I recommend her highly. I gained a lot of confidence with that Color Tool booklet and wander the apartment holding it up to various objects, watching the color families jump out at me when I find the right page. I used it to identify the Annapurna I bought from AVFKW in “mollusk” as a purple (I saw it as a pretty but unclassifiable brown). I always thought I was hopeless at this — Mr. MmmYarn was good at color pairing — and it turns out I only needed some instruction. After seeing the yarn playpen, I have an urge to buy all 200+ colors of Spindrift and must resist, although I think I will eventually buy the 12 colors I used and see where the yarn takes me. Of course, the 14 skeins of Spindrift I already have in the bins are not in these colors. Fortunately, I have plenty of other things to knit in the meantime.

Design process

How do you turn your ideas into finished items? I use sheets of notebook paper and a calculator. I do say “sheets” because it often takes a few goes before pretty yarn turns into a pretty finished object. These mittens were a request. The recipient wanted gray and definitely mittens. Additionally, one of the recipient’s hands is an inch shorter than the other, making it hard to find commercially-made mittens because they need the right amount of stretch to accommodate two sizes. Knitter to the rescue!

It took me a bit of time to find a gray I liked. I found the yarn at Stitches West 2018. It marinated more than a year (ugh!), then I set to it with swatches and notes. I used 4 needle sizes in my swatches and fiddled with different possible stitch patterns. Here is the last swatch:

I did some in the round and some back and forth, and finally settled on size 2 needles and Fluted Rib from Barbara Walker’s “A Treasury of Knitting Patterns.” The recipient is a hiker, and with gray yarn I wanted something a little rock-y and a little reflective of the literal ups and downs of tackling a mountain on foot, plus I needed a row repeat that could be shortened without looking like a mistake. Here is a progress shot with lifelines and stitch markers in place at key points:

I only had to rip back to lifelines twice while figuring out the rate of increases for the thumb. Added bonus: you can dive right into Fluted Rib, no other ribbing needed to keep the cuff from curling. Once mitten #1 was done, the second was a breeze. The tight gauge and yarn’s bit of nylon content means these will wear well even with a life of grasping hiking poles. Here they are, done:

Pattern: own
Yarn: 139 yards Backyard Fiberworks Meadow, 80% merino, 10% cashmere, 10% nylon, color: Stormcloud
Needles: US size 2
Started 5/19 and finished 6/2/2019

They fit well (see photographic evidence!) and the recipient likes them. And her hiking friends do, too. Success!

 

Scraps bin dive

Getting the lid on the scraps bin became a chore; it was time to dive in and see what I had. Mostly I have been sorting small piles of similar weights and playing with color combinations every time I walk past. Sorting is all well and good, but you must cast on if you plan to reduce volume. The box of finished baby booties needed replenishment, the bin yielded a lot of suitable material, and booties make perfect bus knitting, so this is what I did during commute in July:

Pattern: own
Yarns: South West Trading Company TOFUtsies (green/tan), Hikoo Sueño (red), Plymouth Dreambaby DK (pale aqua), Debbie Bliss Rialto 4 ply (bright blue), JaggerSpun Cotton-Wool 3/10 (red/white marl), Dale of Norway Baby Ull (bright yellow), Schoeller Esslinger Fortissima (navy blue), KnitPicks Essential (blue) and Stroll (brown), and some random pale yellow acrylic/nylon
Needles: US size 2
Started 6/25 and finished 7/28/2019

I am sorry the Sueño is now all used up; that was lovely to work with. The bin holds the promise of more booties in the future, but now I’m enamored of possible worsted weight combinations for mittens.

In non-fiber news, the juvenile scrub jays (I’m certain they’re scrub and not stellar’s) apparently love to come see what I’m doing when I go out on the fire escape, even if I’m shaking out rugs. This one sat some 15 inches away and posed nicely:

 

Spit-splicing away

I am making good progress on the Ode to Joy jacket. It involves a lot of color changes, once every 3 to 4 rows for the most part. Here it is so far, both fronts and half of the back complete, with the second back section started:

Look, I’m pink and purple.

It’s made with three strands held together and every 3 or 4 rows you switch out one of the strands for the next color. Options are to weave in lots of ends or to spit-splice. I’m going with option 2. I have lots of trouble spit-splicing, have always had this problem. I dampen and rub and rub and rub and it still frequently comes apart. So even though this is garter stitch, it’s not progressing as quickly as I like. I have to stop every few rows to splice and each splice in this project is taking me several minutes to accomplish even though I break the yarns instead of cutting them (fuzzy ends felt together better) and use a sewing needle to sew the new end in and out through the plies of the old one for two inches.

I mentioned this problem in knitting group a couple of weeks ago and a woman who works in a health research-related field says that she learned along the way that different people have different components in their saliva and I must be someone who’s naturally low on glycerin. Then another woman who has tried soap-making said some people put a bit of spit in their soap to make it turn out better. One can only assume the soap is more successful for the folks who have lots of glycerin and not so successful for the others.

Anyway, back to the jacket. Option 1 is still available, of course, but that would mean weaving in 48 ends per section. Let’s do the math here: 8 colors * 3 strands at a time * 2 ends =  48 ends per section and 2 left front sections + 2 right front sections + 2 back sections = 6, and 48 * 6 = 288 ends. This is not counting the ends in the little side panels, the sleeves, the shoulder bits, the buttonband… so I will keep on spit-splicing away.

Housewarming

Welcome to the new home for Mmm… Yarn. Actually, this was its original home in its first few hours while I learned the rudiments of blogging, then we moved it to the other server. So it’s less a housewarming and more of a homecoming. Bear with me these first few posts while I figure out how to fix all the settings here.

I’ll echo the old Mmm… Yarn’s last post here so you get your yarn fix for today (as this is a knitting blog, after all). Here is the latest progress on the first of the Nixen-Socken, taken this morning at the Laundromat:

Sunday Brunch

I slept in until nearly 9am this morning so I had a late breakfast / early lunch. That reminded me of the Sunday Brunch hat I finished in June that hasn’t made it here yet.

Pattern: own — Garter stitch strip with built-in i-cord for brim, grafted together; picked up stitches for body and knit up
Yarn: Fearless Fibers Mohair and Wool Worsted Yarn, color Sunday Brunch
Needles: US size 6
Size: adult large

Despite hearing other knitters’ opinions that this is fine, I don’t think the stripes on the band work well with the color blocking on the body. However, I know that there’s someone out there who will think this is the greatest thing ever so off it goes into the craft fair box for this November.