3KCBWDAY1 – Colour Lovers

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.

I like colour.  If I look in my chest of drawers, I'll find t-shirts of all colours.  If I look at my Ravelry Projects Page, I see that I haven't limited myself to knitting from any particular area of the colour spectrum.  There are, however, also items I've made in neutral tones.  The one colour that I haven't really used is black - I think the Pirate hat is the only items where I've used black in the last several years.

What I do find myself doing from time to time, though, is having several projects on the go that are in the same colour family.

At the beginning of 2011, I went through a blue/purple/green phase.  A jumper, scarf and then another scarf using the leftovers from the jumper were made and at the same time I think I was spinning up some blue/green fibre which I then used to make a Multnomah shawl.

Last summer, it was red.  Summer Mystery Shawlette, some toe-up socks in Wendy Happy (Virgo colourway) and my Deco cardigan.  All started/knitted on around the same time.

At the moment, knitting life is orange.  St Brigid, a pair of Charade socks and a Rock Island shawl.  All being made in orange tones.  I'm even doing the orange section of the stripey blanket I'm crocheting.

It's not as though I don't have a selection of yarn from which to choose.  My stash is, well,  not as huge as some people's, but big enough that could keep knitting and not run out of yarn for at least the next year and it contains yarns of various types and colours.  I tend to buy what catches my eye.  When buying yarn for a sweater, I don't tend to have in mind a colour, but will usually find a yarn and then choose a colour from within that yarn's palette.  For sweaters, I do avoid certain colours because they don't suit me, but when it comes to socks (in particular), I buy whatever I see that I'd like.  Take the yellow stripey Flusi Monster socks.  The yarn was on offer in Kemps, but I liked the colours they had (the yellow stripey and turquoise stripey).  I don't wear yellow or turquoise (except for a yellow t-shirt my mother-in-law bought me for Christmas a couple of years ago) on my top half as neither colour suits my skin-tone.  With socks, however, it doesn't matter and I found myself enjoying knitting up the yellow yarn.

So, yes, I like colour - I must do; I'm using 33 different shades in the stripey crochet blanket!