Colour my World

I'm going to be teaching colourwork next month at Morris and Sons in Melbourne. It will be a two day workshop Saturday 29th and Sunday 30th June - I'll be covering colour theory, how to choose colours and how to knit with them and everyone will get to make a hat using the techniques of their choice.

Meanwhile, I get to work up class samples and play with colour. Fun!

Knot the Done Thing

Interesting results of last week's experiment with variegated yarn. The yarn has very long repeats of colour so the neckwarmer and hat looks as if they have been knit with different colourways. They haven't. Both pieces used the same ball of Wisdom Poems Sock yarn together with Madeline Tosh Light in Fig and Antler. As you can see, the neckwarmer/cowl (call it what you will) didn't get out of the green/tan repeats, while the hat is all autumnal oranges and browns (with a hint of green at the bottom of the ribbing.) I would have preferred a mix of all of the colours in each piece, but all in all, a reasonable result for an experiment.

And my verdict on the yarn? Love the MadelineTosh Light. But the Poems Sock??? Well... it's really inconsistently spun with occasional yarn blobs and weak sections;

And there were knots, which wouldn't have been so bad if the mill had continued the colour sequence on either side. But no, they ignored that. There were two knots in the ball; one where the colour jumped from green  to brown and other (below) which switched from orange to brown. Very poor quality control.

It also seems odd that Poems is marketed as a sock yarn. It's very fuzzy - as you can see from the cast on edge of the hat, the fibres were already fulling slightly as I knit. Goodness knows how it would wear as a sock. I wouldn't recommend it.

One is One

Oddballs! All knitters know what I'm talking about - those lone skeins of yarn that lurk in the back of your stash. Often bought on impulse, perhaps not enough to make anything, and refusing to co-operate with other yarns.

Here's one of mine, a lone ball of Wisdom Poems Sock Yarn  bought at the Bendigo Sheep and Wool Show a couple of years ago.

Actually, as you can see from the manufacturer's web site, the ball is enough to knit a pair of socks:

But somehow, "knitting it straight" doesn't doesn't do justice to the colourful promise of the skein. As with so many multi-coloured yarns, the finished product disappoints. What to do? Add more colour - of course! Poems Sock is an unusual composition, a bit of a rarity in my stash. I've got loads of sock yarn, many multis, but not many yarns like this, which is a hairy, wool and nylon blend with a single like construction (to be honest, I'm skeptical that it would wear well as socks). But it is similar in weight, hand and construction to Madeline Tosh Merino Light a lovely yarn which I have been experimenting with recently.What's more I bought an underweight, oversaturated "one of a kind" skein of MLT in the fig colourway which goes beautifully with the multi:

With the two skeins of yarn I should have enough to make a loose, medium sized cowl (neckwarmer). No pattern, I'll design on the fly, depending on how the yarn and colours behave. Sooooo - 3.25 needles, cast on 204 sts (a number that is divisible by 2,4, and 6 so will give me a bit of flexibility choosing stranded patterns.) First up a little bit of corrugated ribbing:

I'm more and more convinced that this yarn would make terrible socks. It's very hairy and is fulling slightly as I knit (and shedding all over the couch.) So far, the colours are playing nicely together with the long repeats from the multi skein giving a nice, graded effect. However, as the multi unwinds it is becoming obvious that the fig may not provide enough contrast with the deeper brown sections of the skein of Poem. Which means adding another colour :) Rather than frogging back (which would, I suspect, damage the Poem yarn and drive me bonkers), I'll introduce the new colour by adding a braid between the ribbing and stranded section of the cowl. So now I have Wisdom Poems Sock in Pumpkin Patch together with MLT Fig and MLT Antler (lovely, pale creamy brown). It's starting to look cosy...