Saturday, March 14, 2009

Grab your Shades

Whoops! I lost my camera last weekend, so no blog post. You wouldn't have liked me very much anyway. I didn't like myself. It rained the entire weekend and I felt as flat and lifeless as the grass looks after being buried under snow the past four months. Nasty.

But we're being paid back for it double this weekend. The sun is shining like it means to stay. And since Jim found my camera for me, it was a great opportunity to get a couple of pictures for you. But I've got to warn you. These images may require you to wear sun glasses, they are that bright.

First up is the Kauni that many of you inquired about. Don't get too excited though. This one's a bust.

It certainly looks pretty enough. It's very nice to see the yarn subtly shading itself. But notice how in this very small amount of knitting, the purple has shaded through blue all the way to green, but the orange has merely shifted from yellow-orange to red-orange? This is bad. It means that the color work isn't evenly distributed between the foreground and background.

I've studied many Kaunis and the ones I liked the best used the contrasting colors of the yarn together: orange-blue, green-red and purple-yellow. With the foreground color moving so slowly, I'm going to lose the contrast. So this must go to the frog pond. But what to do with the yarn?

Many people love the Damask Kauni, but I don't think I'd enjoy wearing or knitting it. Jim thought the original Kauni cardigan was too gaudy and I think I should stay away from the horizontal stripes. Plus, I'm perverse enough that I don't want to make what everyone else has done. I've got some other ideas percolating, but I've already gone on long enough about this. Suffice to say, it's dropped for now.

I did finish Dad's sweater this week, but it's still blocking. I'll get Jim to give us a modeling session as soon as it's dry. In the mean time, here it is flat out.

Having finished this, and wanting something exciting to knit this weekend, I started a sock for me and here's were it gets bright again.

Isn't it awful? The yarn looked much better knit up as a Monkey sock, even if it was too small. Oh well, the yarn held up very well to ripping last time.

6 comments:

  1. The blue sweater is perfect. Wow.

    What is wrong with the sock?

    I like you anyway. Get used to it.

    No ideas for the Kauni. You'll come up with something -- you have such a good sense of how to mix colors. --syl

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  3. Anonymous7:06 pm

    Dad's sweater looks great. Take a look at the Kauni Cardigans at funknits.com

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  4. Is it only the orange that has such a long stretch, or other colors that way as well?
    You could look for something that has a higher background/foreground ratio - a 3/1 diagonal or chevron pattern, maybe.
    Most traditional Fair Isle and Scandinavian patterns are pretty well balanced between foreground/background, but there must be something else out there.
    Love the blue sweater. And that's one flashy sock!

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  5. Could it be that the scale of your pattern is too small to allow the colour to spread out enough?

    Dad's sweater is fantastic - even better in person & the buttons are gonna bowl him over.
    Cheers!

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  6. On I must be sick...I kinda like the sock. Shame about the Kauni...I have no ideas sorry. And as for Dad's jumper, it's totally awesome :-)

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