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.

Loot, v 2014

Friday’s “to do” list, had I written one, would have looked something like this: wake up at 4:30am due to weird dreams, including one about arriving at Stitches West without cash (so stupid to dream this, because vendors all take credit cards); drift in a semi-awake state until 6:30am to pretend this was a full night’s sleep; write SW shopping list because did not take the time during the week due to frantic last-minute knitting on massive sweater; weave in ends on sweater while oatmeal cooks, spit-splicing having reduced number of ends to make this a manageable morning task; drive an hour; wander market for 2 hours; long lunch; wander market for 2.5 more hours; meet up with friends for knitting and dinner and more knitting; drive home, arriving a little after 11pm.

Whew, what an exhausting day that was! I woke up so tired yesterday that I barely dragged myself out the door for Saturday errands and didn’t have the wherewithal to play with my new toys in the afternoon, which makes today play day. Here’s this year’s loot:

Dollars-wise, I spent about as much as the last 3 years, but came home with less yardage. I added 5,010 yards (2.85 miles) and 8 ounces of fiber to the stash this year and apparently I was in the mood for green, which didn’t notice until I unpacked the shopping bag.

Left to right across the top: mini-skein of Regia sock yarn that I cast on while wandering, Kollage square needles, stitch markers from Miss Purl, lip balm and lotion bar from Bar-Maids, 2 bags from Erin Lane, 10 skeins Cascade 220 Paints. Left to right across the bottom: black alpaca/silk and Falkland fiber from The Sassy Sheep, 2 skeins DK weight from Oink Pigments, 5 skeins Traveller from The Verdant Gryphon, Damsel from Dragonfly Fibers. At the bottom: Silk Sock from Red Fish Dyeworks.

The stitch markers from Miss Purl were on my shopping list; I didn’t have any large enough to use on a size 10 needle. These are great because the rings she uses are solid, meaning they won’t snag on your yarn while you’re working or stretch out and split. I bought the lotion bar as a comparison to my own lotion bar. [A couple of friends came over last weekend and we made caramel candy and lotion bars (in separate pots, I assure you). The bar was nearly as sticky an affair as the caramel because the honey oozed out after the bar hardened. A couple of days of resting on a towel and some rinses under the tap made it so I can actually use it without wearing it permanently. Sticking a bar to my dry shins might be an effective moisturizing treatment but I’d end up with a puddle of beeswax in my socks and that’s just not the look I’m going for.]

The sweater I began on February 1 was in a wearable state so I wore it to SW; however, it was over 70 degrees outside and about the same inside, so I carried it more than wore it (bulky wool/silk yarn + summery weather = NO). I had hoped to find buttons and did find one style I liked, but $18 a button isn’t happening when I need 5 of them.

It’s not completely finished. I used two balls of yarn for the buttonband/collar so the stripes would match, but at the back of the neck where I twisted them around each other intarsia-style, I twisted them on the wrong side. I didn’t pay attention that it’s a foldover collar until I was on the last two rows and the twists are visible, so I need to rip and re-knit the buttonband and collar. I also may lop a few inches off the sleeves after blocking; my swatch ended up shorter after blocking so they may be OK, must wait and see.

Today’s lunch is simmering on the stove: a root vegetable stew, because although winter isn’t really happening (it’s warm with sparkling sunshine outside now), the root vegetables know it’s winter and they’re what’s to be had at the farmers’ market.

Loot, v 2010

I went to Stitches West last weekend after all. For a few weeks I wasn’t sure whether I would actually go. This was my first big non-family social event since Mr. MmmYarn died and I was oddly nervous, so nervous that I had lots of trouble sleeping for nearly 3 weeks and sometimes even had panic attacks at the thought of going. I did, however, pre-pay for my Friday class and saved up the cash to go and filled out a pink form for using a vacation day, all well in advance, providing great incentive. So I packed up my suitcase Thursday night and told myself no backing out.

For as much shopping time as I had, I didn’t get much loot. Friday I was in class all day except for the lunch break, during which I dropped off my donation for Afghans for Afghans and met up with a few friends in the Market and ate lunch with another friend. There wasn’t time for buying yarn.

Class was good. I took Lapland Hand Garments with Susanna Hansson. Here is a preview of what I made in class, one worsted-weight practice wristlet in the traditional colors for Rovaniemi mittens that I will probably use as a tea glass cozy and the actual wristlet on size US 00 needles, still in progress:

Friday evening after the Market closed I headed to my friend’s house in San Jose. Other friends of ours came up from San Luis Obispo and we all went out to dinner, then had an evening of knitting before hitting the hay.

Saturday we spent all day in the Market. And I was so very good with all that temptation. I go with the cash-in-an-envelope method, to avoid the late March shock of a big Visa bill. Saturday night was wild and crazy: giant salad for dinner plus red wine and chocolate, followed by knitting. Sunday I went for the 1pm drawing (didn’t win) and bought a little more yarn.

So this is it, the 2010 pile of loot:

Click for big.

You’ll notice the complete absence of spinning fiber. While I saw lots that was simply gorgeous, I don’t spin much right now. Instead, I went at little nuts at the Creatively Dyed Yarns booth and bought 6 skeins (pictured top center and bottom right) with the intent of making 2 baby blankets. The first is underway, pictured here on top of a washer at the Laundromat Monday night:

And I also got some great shawl pins that I want to use after I make White Lies Designs’ Colette Cardigan with the green Brooks Farm yarn pictured in the upper left corner.

All in all, a good time.

Today I went to the California Academy of Sciences to admire the butterflies, fish, various sea creatures, albino alligator Claude (who yawned — what a big mouth he has!), and penguins. Then I went out to lunch alone for the first time. I brought a book and went to Jannah, a Middle Eastern restaurant. It’s very good — if you live here, I recommend it highly. I had dolmas and a pizza with little hunks of sausage on it. My one quibble is the music. I suppose if you’re dining with at least one other person and therefore conversing you don’t notice it’s the same song played on a 45-second loop. Dining alone, it’s annoying. And I’m not kidding about the loop: I timed it.