Color me anything! (3KCBWDAY1)

Today is the kick off of the Third Annual Knitting and Crochet Blog Week and this will be my first year participating! What that means is that for the next 7 days I will be posting on a set topic that is posted over on Eskimimi's wonderful blog.

Today's Topic:

Colour LoversColour 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 found this topic overwhelming. My head swam with ideas. Should I look at my stash? Should I look at the last 6 balls of yarn I purchased in a yarn store and talk about why I was drawn to them? And then it came to me. I would look at my hat collection!

So I took my hat bin out to the deck and dumped it out and started to look at the hats that I had made (and I recently weeded this out of things I don't wear/like so this is the keeper pile!) and started to really look at what I have going on here. My first thought was "I am not afraid of color!" which I already knew so that wasn't all that revelatory. Then I started to separate a little to see what I saw.

The above two hats were made out of Knit Picks Bare yarn that I hand dyed and then knit up. Similar color range - different styles. I had more hats in this pile at one time - but for one reason or another they ended up felted into bowls. (I do that with wool hats that don't make the cut. I have wool bowls all over the place!)

And then I separated all the hats that I combined two or more colors of yarn:

• The skully hat has glow in the dark yarn and I really wanted an authentic pirate feel - so the colors kind of picked themselves on that one.
• The hat next to it I made with Lime as the body and forest green as the ribbing. I had this exact hat in the reverse as well - but I think I made it a size too small and it is now a felted bowl. (I told you I do that a lot!) And this was a stash busting decision.
• The two striped hats in the center are both stash busters as well and I knit both of them largely while away from home. I needed something really simple (which is why I knit so many hats!) that I didn't have to pay much attention to. I was able to knit and talk at a graduation party and the stripes kept me interested enough to not feel like the hat was a burden to knit.
• The orange/green/brown hat is from yarn my co-worker brought me from Scotland. It was one of my earliest color works and I still love this hat. It turned out perfect!
• And the last hat was me just loving the colors together and loving the squish of the Debbie Bliss Como yarn. Wonderful warm squish hat.

On to self striping yarn. Love it! Love the color combinations. Love the boldness. The hat above is knit with Adriafil Knitcol and the hat below is Online Linie 231. I love both of the yarns so much. (Although the Linie gets worn less as I decided to give it ear flaps and it turns out I am just not much for the ear flaps. Live and learn!)

Both of these hats were just such fun to knit as the yarn was changing constantly and I would just knit and knit wanting to see what was around the next corner.

And then you find a pattern you love that helps you REALLY bust through all those single skeins of almost no yardage yarn that you HAD to buy and had no idea what to do with them. The yarns are: Colinette Point 5 (Which is 54 yards a skein), Malabrigo Yarn Aquarella (65 yards) or Malabrigo Gruesa (65 yards). INSTANT gratification projects! And this is actually two different hat patterns. One is the Handspun Beanie by Woolie Wormhead on Ravelry and is currently unavailable while it is being tweaked. The other is The Easy Malabrigo Hat and is available for free on Ravelry. Both wonderful patterns and I admit to running to my local yarn store and buying MORE of these yarns so I could make the hats again and again.

I told myself I might gift some of these hats - but I was a big liar and had to keep them all for my greedy self. I am keeping the patterns handy though for emergency gift knitting.

Sometimes the fiber content will influence my love of the color. Alpaca - I love you so much! When a yarn appeals to your eyes and then you touch it and your hands sink into a cloud of love, you pretty much HAVE to purchase it. This hat looks really busy - but it's heaven when worn and I love it. There is nothing bad about Misti Alpaca yarn. Yes it stretches. Yeah - it's a bit spendy. But it's so warm! And knitting with it is just a pleasure. Nothing makes me happier that I am one of those slow pokes who throws her yarn when I knit quite like Misti. Fabulous!

This is Reynold's Blizzard. Sadly this yarn is now discontinued - but it's another one of those where you think of jumping onto a giant marshmallow. How can that now be awesome to knit with?!?! And for some reason I needed this bold bold pink color. I am not sure why I would look at all the yarn and say - The Pink! The color is a little overwhelming. But I had to have it.

And more Alpaca. I lean toward the blues with Alpaca (with one pink exception...). Not sure if it's how the fiber takes the dye that makes me need to own it? But when I think Alpaca - I GENERALLY think the blue family.

So my study of my hat collection was fun. I don't think it revealed a whole lot - other than that there are a lot of factors that go into the decision I make when I decide to knit something. If I am stash busting, I will compromise my color desire for a project in order to walk the path of the righteous stash buster. If I am specifically purchasing a yarn to make "Project ____" I will look at the yarn options and the finished objects on Ravelry and decide based on what I see and what color makes me REALLY want to knit it.

I love the look of a solid color but hate to knit it. (Yawn.)

I love to knit wild colors and get excited by unusual combinations. The finished object doesn't always live up to my expectations though. Like my cowl I call my "Clown Vomit Cowl". I kinda have to be in the right frame of mind to pull that one off. (read: Drunk.)

 As I put my hats away I looked down and thought how pretty my sock color was against the wood with my beat up jeans. Color inspiration is just everywhere.