A New Love Affair
Have I told you guys how much I love stranding? How color gradients make me weep with joy? If a thing of beauty is a joy forever, then my color wheel will always be by my side to bring me that joy.
This weekend I took a Fair Isle Bag class at my LYS that helped me see the difficulties and possibilities in this type of knitting first hand. First, we chose the pattern combination for our bags, then went forth in the shop to choose colors. I chose a gorgeous olive green, hot pink, softer pink, white and a lighter green all in Brown Sheep Nature Spun Sport, which is fast becoming My Favorite Yarn of all time. When the time came to cast on, I decided to make the olive my background color and then arrange the rest as I went.
I very quickly realized that the hot pink and white combo was too strong. After I finished that band, I started the next one, this time vowing to do some more subtle shading. There are no pics of the first experiement--when I added in the lighter green, I quickly discovered that it made the whole thing look rather wimpy and I ripped it back. In the end the lighter green (Nervous Green by name) was set aside for another project, and the pinks got a chance to be seen together. Only one row in that band used white and the difference was remarkable.
So now I'm on band 3, which was designed to be the focal point and the center of the bag. I'm having a blast, and see some colorwork in my future...