Knitting on Impulse

Knitting On Through... Stuff

Thanks to the 2010 Olympics, and beyond that, the now-local world of sliding sports, it looks like I'll be pretty much on my own with the business/household/parenting thing for large chunks of the foreseeable future. Rob does have the odd hour off here and there (oh, how I wish he were being paid for this) and I am proud to report that packages have been streaming out the door Right On Time. Today, however, he reported that the brakes on the car are now minimally functional (and I know it makes me a bad bad wife to say this out loud, but I noticed they were a little mushy three days ago, and it was All In My Head until today when he was driving down the very steep hill from the bobsled track and found the whole stopping thing to be rather fraught. Sigh. Even the most enlightened male....) So there will maybe be a day's delay while we impose on a friend to drive down the highway to the nearest gas station for brake fluid. (I know. A smart, modern woman would have known how to Take Charge and check that herself.) I might just walk to the post office tomorrow, but it will depend on whether the packages will fit in my backpack and how hard it's raining if they won't. It's not quite 500 miles, but the warm, fuzzy thought is there....

It'll be a good opportunity to see if puppykins can behave herself in the post office line-up. She could use a little novelty and it's pretty quiet early in the morning.

How about a wee sneak peek for the week?

 

Coneflower Gloves

Knit to my daughter's exacting specifications and pronounced (by her) to be "way better than I ever imagined," these are basic knit-to-fit stockinette gloves garnished with a smidge of inexpert embroidery and two all-important pom poms.

 
"Knit-to-fit" in this case, incurred a certain degree of whinging about the four zillion fittings required to get the fingers of the first glove exactly right.

I don't think I'll win any prizes for embroidery, but you can make out a general petal-ish impression, right?

Not entirely unlike a Coneflower?

The recipient is thrilled, which in the end, is what really matters.

 
The yarn was a tragically knot-containing skein of Blissful Sock in Echinacea.  (There were actually two more, each with a single knot, that I kept back - I suppose if anyone is so inclined, I could knock off a buck or so for the knot and let them go....) I have to say, I really loved working with this sock yarn - the superwash treatment has done nothing at all to diminish the sheen and wooly softness characteristic of BFL.  Sheer pleasure to knit up.

After Sunset

After the sun falls behind the mountain, as the light fades away, but before the heavens are quite black enough to reveal the stars:

 
the dark expanse is rich and magical, retaining hints of brilliant blue of a sunny day gone by, the warm glow of completed sunset, the smokey purple mist that invariably haunts the slopes.

Still available in:

Merino Whisper:

 
Bluefaced Bliss (fingering):

 
and Merino-Silk:

 
Summit Sock, Mere Sock, Camel Silk, Pure Silk Lace, and Silky Cashmere Lace will be coming in next week's update.

Echinacea

I did a very subtle semi-solid version of the coneflower last year, but deep down, I've been longing to do this - to celebrate the vibrant contrast of the candy pink petals and the flaming gold/orange/red/brown of the central cone. I think it's a perfect Samhain / Hallowe'en sort of colourway.

Mostly in socks, because it IS an awfully vibrant colourway....

Blissful Sock:

Mere Sock:

 
and Summit Sock:

 
Merino Whisper is a new yarn I've been playing with for a while - a lofty single ply merino that knits around Aran weight but has amazing yardage.  It is deliciously soft and would be the perfect yarn for cowls, scarves, mittens, hats, etc. Despite the soft hand, it is amazingly pill resistant - I ripped and reknit the bulk of one test skein three or four times while coming up with a simple cowl design (I was feeling indecisive) and it looks none the worse for wear!

 
 I did indeed do the sunset colourway, but I'll save that for another post so as not to overdo the images.

Lost Lake

So I took the lake:

And pulled out the palette:

The skein isn't dry yet, but I'm really pleased with the result:

I think I shall knit this up along the lines of the purple scarf - but since the green patches are supposed to look like irregular shadows, I won't try too hard for the perfect sine wave.

I found a correlate in my gemstone collection, too (cloudy aquamarine and idocrase):

I know bright sunlight isn't the best for these kinds of photos, but we haven't had any for a few days, so I couldn't resist!  More yarn pics tomorrow when the silk is dry. 

Rose

It was a good weekend - several sorts of good, and though it makes me glance nervously over my shoulder to say it, I think I might even have my mojo back.  (I probably shouldn't have said that out loud, but why live in fear?  Creating is so much better than reacting.)

Here's what became of the "rose" silk:

The yellow did a passable imitation of a sine wave, meandering to and fro along the length.  I think this is the closest I've come yet to recreating a natural colourway (though the evergreen scarf was a close second) - funny that it's also one of the most - shall we say - "vibrant" colourways I have done.  The contrast is almost a little overwhelming - what do you think?

I was going to share another dinner and recipe, but I think the tomatoes might clash rather horribly with the scarf.  Tomorrow.  (Like a host of other not-yet-gotten-to stuff - putting the Rockin' Girl Blogger button up - thank-you Charity and TanteJ - also replying to about a million emails, and and and....)

Sun and Rain (continued)

One of the core principles in traditional Fair Isle is the practice of maintaining approximately constant levels of contrast throughout the pattern.  While value is not the only factor contributing to contrast, it is a very useful place to start. 

The greyscale function is a great way to analyze value, independent of the confounding variables of warmth and saturation :

The palettes rearranged in order of value:

Starting with the ribbing, I chose to anchor the bottom of the pattern with the darkest values, graduating upward to the lightest.  Here's where some eyeballing and judgement comes into play - I kept the sequence intact, but strategically repeated certain colours in order to control the level of contrast.

I tried a blues-on-copper pattern, again keeping the sequence but strategically playing with proportions to keep the contrasts similar throughout.  Occasionally, when the saturation of a particular colour made it too prominent regardless of proportions, I simply omitted it from that sequence.  Conversely, when there wasn't enough contrast, I skipped forward to a more intense hue, and continued the sequence from there.

I kept the motif very simple, in keeping with the original photo.  Copper-on-blue:

One possibility for putting it together:

This is perhaps the simplest of an infinite array of possibilities, and missing many of the design elements of traditional Fair Isle, but it does illustrate some useful concepts in juxtaposing colours for two-stranded knitting.

Sun and Rain

I thought it was high time to get back to playing with creating patterns from photos.  This week's subject is not technically a natural object, though it does represent nature at work.

It is the weathered edge of the Celestri sculpture which graces the courtyard of the Four Seasons hotel, across the road from our condo.

I used the mosaic function to tease out individual colours:

This is just begging for a Fair Isle treatment - the juxtaposition of desaturated cool hues with the hot peachy copper, and the sober shades of black anchoring the bottom.  The cracks in the metal clearly suggest the shaded two colour ribbing that would border the garment.

The first step is to sample each of the three main colour groupings (I generally start by pulling out as many different colour variants as I can find, without worrying about order or proportion.)

But since this is getting to be an awfully long and picture-heavy post, I shall carry on with the process of analyzing, ordering, and patterning tomorrow.

Playing With Colour IV: Optical Mixing

Optical mixing is the phenomenon whereby the eye "blends" colours placed side by side to perceive a third colour.  The smaller the dots of colour, the more complete the blending effect.  An excellent article on the difference between additive, subtractive, and optical colour mixing, and the use of optical mixing by pointillist painters, may be found here.

The phenomenon of optical mixing is particularly relevant to knitters, being responsible for the richly painted appearance of traditional FairIsle, as well as the often dramatic (and occasionally distressing) difference between a handpainted skein and its knitted object.  It is also the effect that may be deconstructed by pixellating a photograph into larger blocks of the component colours.

Optical mixing of complementary colours creates a desaturated third colour, particularly when mixed in approximately equal proportions:

Using a darker shade of orange shifts the balance a bit, however, being an intensely warm hue, the orange still dominates the mix:

Optical mixing of analagous colours creates the impression of a single colour somewhere in the middle of the hue range, but with subtle depth and shading:

Proportion and mixing become particularly critical when trying to recreate a particular effect.  Take the delicate hues of this mountain sunrise:

Isolating the individual colours

Yields the palette:

Wide stripes, such as one might find in Noro yarns, would give the closest approximation of the graduated bands of light in the photo:

Short colour repeats might yield something like this:

Tiny colourwork motifs could further blend the effect:

 

All three are perfectly attractive in their own right, but if you had your heart set on the first, you might be disappointed to get the second or third.

Practical points:

• A relatively small collection of coloured yarns can be strategically arranged to create the optical impression of a much larger palette. 
• When designing with hues that are far apart on the colour wheel, pay particular attention to proportion - length of the repeat in a variegated or handpainted yarn, size of the stripes or motifs in colourwork.  Remember that complementary colours tend to desaturate each other - those rich jewel tones may well coalesce into a lovely shimmering brown. 
• Varying the value, saturation, and relative amount of a single component hue can dramatically alter the perceived colour of the mix.
• Consider optically mixing analagous colours to add depth to a single hue. 
• Try swatching on screen or paper first, to narrow the choices. 

Playing With Colour III

Last week was pretty heavy on the theory, so I thought I'd stay with the ideas of saturation and value this week, and demonstrate some ways to play with them, using the crocus palette as a starting point. 

The first thing you could do with a Nature-derived palette is to work with it exactly as you find it.

This is the challenge I set myself for the Patterns in Nature series, mainly because I wanted to break out of my colour comfort zone and learn from what I found rather than judging it.  It is by no means the only option, and once you take the step of translating a pattern into yarn, you will be forced to make choices and compromises in any case.  It helps immensely to know which changes will be most likely to yield the outcome you have in mind.

Starting with the, ahem.... exuberant option:

ie.

Nudging the warmest and coolest hues into direct opposition on the colour wheel, choosing a dark, saturated version of purple and a light, saturated version of yellow-orange (in equal amounts, to boot) yields just about the maximal contrast you could ever hope to achieve.  Fabulous for a 7 year old's birthday cake, possibly less so for all but the most extroverted fashionistas.

What if you liked the cheerfulness of the contrast, but wanted to tone down the eyeball searing effect a wee bit?  One option would be to maintain the contrast in value (dark/light) but go for less saturated versions.  Changing the proportions would further civilize the combination.

You could reduce the difference in value but maintain the saturation:

Or some combination thereof - playing with value and saturation gives you loads of options for fine-tuning the dramatic effect of a palette.  Don't forget that the characteristics of the fibre itself will also affect the optical result - texture, fuzziness, and shine all create effects that alter the perceived properties of a colour. (More on that another day.)

At the opposite (but much more common) extreme: what if you are terribly conservative about the colours you wear, but fell in love with the royal velvet of that crocus?  You could fall back on the safe option of simply combining lighter and darker shades of purple, but the result (though attractive) lacks some of the depth and complexity that made the original so appealing.  You might like to benefit from the added spark of a complement, nevertheless, it will be a chilly day in Hades before you wear orange.

One solution is to tame the complementary colour until its origins are so subtle as to be barely recognizable.  There are a number of ways to achieve this, such as adding orange to the purple to progressively desaturate it to a nice unassuming brown, or vice versa.  (This is where an accurately printed colour chart comes in handy, but I will try for a reasonable approximation here.)

Another solution is to go back to the original three-way palette (top of this post), but keep the proportions severely in check.

A tweedy yarn with infintesimal flecks of the desired colours can be particularly helpful in this regard.  Placing the warm hues within areas of similar value will also help to keep the contrast in check.

The possibilities are infinite.  The general principle is that drama is heightened with increased saturation, wider contrast (light/dark, warm/cool) and large blocks of the contrasting colours. If you love a particular palette but are uncomfortable with the dramatic effect, try isolating the aspects that most appeal to you (eg. richly saturated dark purple) and tweak the remaining colours to fit your personal vision.

Fine tuning the contrast in this way comes in particularly handy when planning traditional Fair Isle - but that's a topic for another day.