Today kicks off the 3rd Annual Knitting and Crochet Blog Week, so I’m interrupting the regularly scheduled programming for most of this week to answer the prompts. Are you participating in this blogging week? Let me know in the comments!
Today’s prompt is one I love.
Colour is one of our greatest expressions of ourselves when we choose to knit or crochet, so how do you choose what colours you buy and crochet or knit with? Have a look through your stash and see if there is a predominance of one colour. Do the same with your finished projects – do they match? Do you love a rainbow of bright hues, or more subdued tones. How much attention do you pay to the original colour that a garment is knit in when you see a pattern? Tell readers about your love or confusion over colour.
If you’ve been reading this blog for a while now, you know I go through color phases. This year, I was feeling very red at the beginning of the year. I’d have to say red has shown up fairly frequently in my crafting history, so this year isn’t much of a surprise. There’s also a good amount of purples, golds, blues, and greens (I like to joke that my favorite color is Mardi Gras—purple, gold, and green).
I’m primarily drawn to deeply saturated jewel tones, as I am mostly a selfish knitter and those colors suit my skin tone well. Colors like this from Sanguine Gryphon…
…or this from Dream in Color…
…or this from Sweet Georgia…
…make me really happy and somewhat energized. And I love working with semi-solids like this.
Color informs a lot of my knitting, especially since, in the past, I’ve been one to buy now and plan a project later. In some ways, I think it may be easier to see a project photo and imagine it in a particular color to suit one’s needs, so I may be going about this the harder way. But I also think I have a pretty good eye for matching yarns to patterns, and I’m “fearless” in that I’m not afraid to rip out a project if the yarn and pattern just aren’t working.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this! How does color inform your crafting?
Great blog! Absolutely love those three yarn colours.
I’m participating in this blog week too – isn’t it fun!
Thank you! It is a lot of fun. I don’t know if I made it the whole week last week, but I’m going to try this year!
That green is especially beautiful. I tend to pick colors that I love for personal projects, but with my dolls it’s a free for all. They pretty much evolve into what they need to be. I just make sure I have a rainbow of colors available.
Isn’t it lovely? I adore Dream in Color’s colors. I would fail at making dolls, because I am heavily biased to certain colors, hehehe.
Oh i love the golden one! that is one colour that shows up a lot in my stash. but that one is especially pretty!
If you ever feel the need to look at beautiful colors and torture yourself by not buying any (though that last part may just be me), just peek at the Sweet Georgia Yarns website (and make sure you type in sweetgeorgiayarns.com…).
Lovely colors and yarns! Like you, I pick colors that tend to look good on me. I knit for other people but most often for myself, so I pick whatever calls to me, then decide on the project later (except in the case of sweaters, I always have the pattern before I invest in sweater quantity yarn).
Sometimes I am drawn to colors that maybe aren’t best for me, but thankfully I have a good group of friends who are happy to take handknits off my hands. 😀 I am definitely with you on having to have the pattern before buying the yarn for sweaters!
My stash is mostly things I “inherited” (or frogged) from other people, so doesn’t really reflect my taste.
And the other part of my stash is where I let my kids each pick colours for a sweater the other day, so it really reflects each of their tastes (plain grey, teal with brown, neon rainbow, and purple).
But what I really love are autumn shades – deep green, cranberry, chocolate brown, and gold.
Aww, I think it’s really fun that you incorporate your kids into your yarn buying! That’s sweet. Those shades you listed sound fantastic–I can feel the crisp fall air just thinking about them.
I love that your favorite color is “Mardi Gras”. Too funny!
I’m a bit of a selfish knitter as well, so most of my stash is filled with blues and blue based colors.
So much easier than saying “amethyst, gold, and emerald.” 😉
I have two skeins of Sweet Georgia I think. They are awesome jewel-tones! You have beautiful skeins there. For projects for me, I pick colors I’m in the mood for; for others, a neutral usually wins out.
Felicia’s colorways are amazing. Not all of them speak to me immediately, but I wouldn’t kick any of them out of my stash.
I tend to work mostly with solid yarns, especially if its a busy pattern, like lace or cables… If its a plain garter thing I might go crazy and let the colors flow… That green yarn its beautiful, it makes me think in forests 😀
Once I knit down this stash, I definitely plan to invest in more solid or not-highly-variegated semi-solids. It seems a lot of patterns I’m drawn to involve elements (cables or lace, mostly) that don’t always play nicely with wild color shifts.
Sweet Georgia is special!
Isn’t it? Love her stuff!
What pretty yarn! And a very nice blog! Mardi Gras is a great color choice!
Thank you for stopping by! Don’t be a stranger. 😀
I tend towards variety in color, but they’re all on the more muted side. I think I’m hungering for some stronger colors–mustard yellow, tangerine, sky blue, bright red, you know? I think I’m still getting up my courage and learning to pick out quality yarns! 🙂
There’s a wide range of variegated in my stash, but I felt those three definitely illustrated my general preferences the best. 😀 Mustard is one of my favorite colors–I loved using it in my Delancey cardigan. it sounds to me like you have a fantastic palette in mind!
I love those colors! Amazing yarn!
Aren’t they beautiful?! So many amazing dyers out there!
I love all three of those colours! I find the colours in my stash are all jewel-toned and I do go in phases…I had a huge grey phase, so there’s a layer of stash that is various shades of grey. Then there’s the green phase…the blue phase…
Oddly enough, for someone who’s favourite colour is pink, I don’t have much of that. I would love to add more yellow too, but the ones that I gravitate to I can’t really wear next to my face. And there’s only so many pairs of socks you can have in yellow!
Hah, if you have nothing better to do and go through some of my posts from last year, you can see how my purple phase and gold phase were TOTALLY in effect throughout the year. I’ve been really good this year, but anytime I see a great red or purple yarn, I think there’s a little drooling…
I love to use jewel tones when I am making a crazy quilt. I don’t use them in my “sane” quilting where I prefer to use the traditional light, medium and dark fabrics.
Those Sweet Georgia yarns are a bit yummy aren’t they?! I love the colours you have chosen. I’m the same as you and tend to buy and then plan later, I find it hard to say no to yarn in case I never see it again!