Friday, June 05, 2009

messing around with color

color trio

Color has always been challenging for me in knitting. I do fine with large blocks of color, or with stripes, but when it comes to the fancy colorwork department, I stay away.

It mystifies me. I've always wanted to be able to knit amazing colorwork like this or this, but I never really felt like I had the knitting chops (or the patience) to manage multiple balls of yarn and all those floats and color changes and whatnot.

Instead, I have always stuck with texture and structure to make my knitting interesting. But my most favorite vintage styles manage to combine both color and texture, like this.

Lately I've been really feeling the need to get over this hangup and just learn how to knit what I want to. So I got a good book (it was on sale!) and spent some time reading it, and realized that this is not rocket science. (Duh - of course it's not! It's knitting! Nothing in knitting is as hard as you think it will be before you try it - when will I learn this??).

I grabbed some inexpensive-yet-colorful craft store yarn (see above) for some small projects that will let me try out some colorwork techniques. Preliminary indications are that this is going to be fun.

7 comments:

  1. Yay for color! I like stranded color, but intarsia is not my favorite. I can do it, but I don't wanna! Kind of like kitchener stitch...

    What are you making first?

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  2. I will honestly say that every time I have worked with color it has been nothing short of fun! Enjoy!

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  3. Mmmm, the sweater in that link is delicious, like a scoop of sherbet. Can't wait to see what you did. Oh, I finished my modified scrappy cardi...blogged it here...

    http://mamieknits.blogspot.com/2009/05/return-to-making.html

    Maybe not the greatest decision to go with the size 2s I had on hand, but love it. And so does the Mama it was gifted upon. Thanks fo rthe pattern. :)

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  4. It's not too tricky, is it? You just have to keep the various balls of wool separated in your lap - lest it becomes a big tangled mess!

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  5. funny,
    i never thought
    you shied away
    from color...
    now maybe
    you can teach me
    a thing or two.
    xoxo

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  6. I use the knitting nest (I got mine from knitpicks) when I use more than one skein-- love it!

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