Color Theory in Action
The skies were brown last Saturday. High winds filled the air with sand and dust, blotting out everything beyond a quarter of a mile. Charles went out for the Saturday newspaper, and came back telling of white caps on the normally calm Lake Proctor.
The afternoon brought excitement to our area. The weekend before, a neighbor burned two big piles of brush. The embers were still alive enough, after a week, for the strong wind to whip them back into flame. Volunteer firemen and others drove back and forth by our house, trying to figure out how to get close enough to the fire to do any good. We kept an eye on the comings and goings, and I noticed that the trucks and pickups reflected a cool, blue light.
“Let’s go for a drive,” Charles suggested. Everything had a bluish cast to it. We drove over the lake again. The same blue light lit the brown waves. We had to go back for the camera, and here are a couple of the pictures we took. The opposite shores of the lake are close, but the dust was so thick, we couldn’t see them.
So why the blue light? Thanks to years of reading about color, I think I know. Sunlight contains
every color of light. If we see an object as green, it is because the object absorbs every color of light, except green light. It reflects the green light into our eyes, and we see green.
The dust in the air was brown, which is a combination of yellow and red tones. The billions of dust particles in the air reflected yellow and red light, changing its usual path. The air was so thick with dust, that much of the yellow and red light was probably bounced right back into the atmosphere.
The light that finally made it to us down here on the earth was disproportionately blue. That’s why we saw blue light reflected off of cars and water, and why less shiny objects, like grass and our skin, looked bluer than usual.
I love knowing about color.
Toronto Yarn Shop is Fabulous!
My friend Joan turned eighty last week. Her daughters threw a surprise birthday party for her, and people came from far and wide to Toronto to celebrate. It was a wonderful weekend of talking, talking, talking and quite a bit of eating, too.
Toronto has an almost sinful number of yarn shops. I had one afternoon to look around on my own, so I went to Romni Wools, which was billed has having more yarn than anyone else.
My goodness.
I have never, ever seen so much yarn in one place. It was difficult to take it all in. Yarn in twelve-foot-high bins, yarn in stackable bins, yarn hanging from racks, yarn in laundry baskets, fancy yarns, plain yarns, expensive luxury yarns, and reasonably-priced yarns all vied for space in this huge and crowded store. The coned yarns, spinning supplies, and discontinued yarns were in the basement.
The visual stimulation is strong, and one of the people working there told me that customers often look around a while, then go next door for a calming cup of coffee, before coming back to make their final choices.
I had some specific colors and textures in mind, so I took my time to find several great yarns, which I’ll show later.
If you knitters and crocheters find yourself in Toronto with a free afternoon, Romni Wool (658 Queen Street West) is the place to go.
Textile Collecting—Andean Hat Inside
This hat is just beautiful. The gauge is 18 stitches per inch. The workmanship looks flawless, and includes pretty details, like the tassels and this tiny knitted ripple. I was much impressed at the subtle colors of this hat. Could they be naturally dyed?
Nope. Take a look at the inside of the hat. Those are the original colors. They are gorgeous, too, and a lot brighter. The outside of the hat must be sun-faded.
This knitter combined stranding with intarsia. One white stitch separates the bright color patches. That white thread carries all the way around the inside, while the bright colors stay within their own bounds. You can see the intarsia color change where the bright colors meet. It takes a great deal of skill to combine stranding with intarsia successfully.
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Thank you to kat kat-knits.blogspot.com and woolwinder woolwindings.blogspot.com for your compliments on my hat model. She’s quite a show-off, and loves to be in photos. You would like her in person, too, because she is a sweet and smart and funny person, who loves yarn. And now, she’s FOUR! She’s so excited about that.
The Last Poncho Installment (for now)
A gorgeous, deep, glowing, burgundy microfiber chenille was in my yarn collection for about 15 years before the perfect project came along. The yarn would be gorgeous in the pink and black poncho I was making. Even though the last project I made with chenille grew ‘worms,’ this chenille was of much better quality (well, it was a lot more expensive, anyway). It would be fine.
It wasn’t fine. The chenille grew worms almost immediately.
In the meantime, Eva made a couple of ponchos with Lion Brand Fun Fur in the last couple of rounds. They looked so good, I decided to do the same on my poncho. Luckily the chenille round was only third from the end, with two mohair rounds after it. If you’ve worked with mohair, you know the impossibility of ripping it out, so I cut off those rounds.
This was right after Christmas, and Michael’s ran a sale on a number of wonderful yarns, including Lion Brand Fancy Fur and Fun Fur. They were $2.00 per ball—an absolute bargain! Two rounds of fuchsia Fancy Fur and two rounds of black Fun Fur later, my poncho was finally done.
Miss Poncho at the Fair
After yesterday’s chilly wind, it was a relief to go into the Erath County Livestock Show and Junior County Fair arena. But the path between us and the County Fair check-in area was perilous indeed. With one eye on the ground and one eye on the look-out for raised cow tails, we threaded our way between nervous young showmen and -women on the left, and the rear ends of their Holstein heifers on the right.
We made it, unscathed, to check Eva’s poncho into the fair. We spoke to several of Eva’s friends from school, which is one of the very nice things about living in a rural area and going to small schools.
We ran a couple of errands around town and then watched cows parading around, back at the arena. They are so pretty, when they’re all clean with mohawk hairdos up their backs. And the kids looked nice in their white shirts. Some wore white jeans, too. Very brave of them, I thought.
At noon, the County Fair prizes were awarded. Eva’s blue and white poncho won first prize in the junior textiles division, where she edged out a pretty cowboy-motif quilt for the win. The judges liked her poncho so much, they awarded her the 2007 Erath County Youth Fair Grand Prize. We are very proud of her!
Poncho Gal
Eleven-year-old Eva admired my pink and black poncho made of yarns from my collection. ”Mom, I want to make a blue and white poncho. Can I use your yarn?” she asked.
We pulled a bunch of bluish and whitish yarns from the collection, and she got to work. She graciously accepted advice on color arrangement. We looked for alternatives to fringe, and came up with working beads into a crocheted chain.
It looks great and Eva is going to enter it into the 4H Youth Fair next month.
Eva’s friend Jasmine loves green and black, so Eva crocheted her a poncho, too. This is Lion Brand Homespun with an eyelash yarn for a border. It looks great, too! Hurrah, Eva, for deciding what to do and then doing it!
We’d Make Terrible Druids
Someday we’ll have a new house, and so we hope that Ian Boyle will build us another solstice-catching pillar. (Lots of pics here of the pillar in our yard now.) “Charles, the winter solstice is coming up, and we need to measure the angle of the sunrise, so Ian can orient the pipe correctly,” I said, more or less.
Charles took his compass outside at sunrise and measured the direction of the sunrise. “Hmm,” he thought, “this angle seems familiar.” Well, it’s exactly the same angle that our pillar’s pipe is oriented in order to catch the summer solstice sunset.
Okay, we should have been able to figure that out on our own. But we didn’t even think of it. And I thought we were sort of in touch with nature. Obviously, this is the kind of thing you miss, when you spend all your time knitting and crocheting.
Textile Collecting 5—Andean Hat with Alpaca
In the comments about Textile Collecting 3, a reader said that she thought these hats would be made of alpaca. I think they always were in the past, but most of the hats I have are not natural fibers. The one shown here is the only one that has any natural fiber to speak of.
This one doesn’t show the best technique of the bunch—the stranded threads seem to be pulled too tightly. But the cream-colored yarn feels wooly and soft, like alpaca.
The ear flaps look a little different from the other hats. Here’s a close-up, so you can see.
The little balls at the end of the ties are cute. They’re embroidered, maybe on felt?
Textile Collecting 4—Andean Hat with Buttons
Do you love these buttons?! They look so great, and they probably help keep the ear flap down. This is a lovely hat, worked in a fine gauge of 17 stitches to the inch. The straps are woven, with beads along the edges of the tape.
I love the stranded garter pattern just above the ear flaps. Those Andean guys sure know their knitting.
Textile Collecting 3—Andean Hats
This cute hat fits close around the head, and then it has a long, narrow tube at the top, ending with a tassel, similar to a hat knitster posted recently (and here).
The knitter apparently substituted colors, whenever the original color wasn’t enough. You can see it in the detail photo, in the lower, center diamond.
Of the hats we have, this has the coarsest gauge, measuring in at 12 stitches per inch.
