Month: January 2012

Color

Published on by kountingsheep

It’s no secret that I love color (I’m wearing red shoes today, which makes me very happy). All you have to do is look at my projects over the years, and you will find that there has been no shortage of color from this fiber enthusiast. But something I want to try and do this year is focus more intentionally on color pairing, namely, stepping outside my box of color combinations. I love these colors for inspiration (especially that Tangerine Tango, Pantone’s Color of 2012):
 
My first attempts at this will be in baby blankets. I’ve already purchased yarn for two baby blankets, using unconventional color palettes for baby boys. Not that the colors aren’t suitable for boys, but they typically aren’t the first “go-to” colors when knitting blankets. I’m also in love with bold solids right now, so I think I’ll be staying away from the variegated varieties of yarns and focusing in on the solids. 
 Another thing I’ve been latching onto more recently, especially since I started spinning, is natural colors. I’m in love with browns and cremes and greys right now, which is great because my current spinning project is a natural-creme-colored Jacob fleece. A great thing about natural colors is that you can pop some bold color with it for some modern flair (grey and bright yellow, yes! brown and a rich red, absolutely! lime green and white, love it!).

So playing with color is just one of my many goals this year, which luckily for me, isn’t a very hard goal at all.

Mallard

Published on by kountingsheep

I posted several months ago (here) about one of my favorite yarns that I’ve spun, called “Mallard.” It didn’t take very long for me to dive into this skein once the weather started getting colder. I knew I had wanted to make a hat with this yarn, so I was absolutely thrilled when the yardage amount ended up being enough for not only a hat, but also a pair of fingerless mitts and a cowl.

{Mallard Tam
Pattern: Ysolda’s Snapdragon Tam from Whimsical Little Knits 2
Used half the skein, approx. 232 yards
US Size 5 needles}

Love the color changes. The colors are a bit richer, brighter than in these pics. But spinning definitely toned down the color palette, as did the knitting.

I’m the one in the middle, wearing the hat. You can just barely see it.

I think the pattern may have been just a little bit too intricate for the yarn, but the cabling detail is still visible, so that makes me happy. For the mitts, I used the coordinating Snapdragon Mitts pattern, and again, I think the detail work gets lost in the colors. But I don’t want to reknit them, and they are very cozy to wear!

After finishing the mitts, I had just enough yarn leftover to make a little cowl. Since this is precious handspun, I wanted to make something that would be close to my skin, as well as use up every last yard of yarn (which I did). Luckily I found some coordinating sock yarn in my stash in a nice neutral brown to finish out this simple feather and fan lace stitch cowl (which I finished and wore on Christmas Eve).
Knitting in the car on Christmas Eve

I just love knitting with my own handspun! I think one of my goals this year will be to weave something with handspun.