Tuesday, March 21, 2017

Lent

Three weeks done – nearly half-way. Thursday is in fact the half-way point. Rachel and I agreed on the phone last week that this is where Lent gets a bit dreary. One skips through the first few days, sustained by a virtuous glow. But now it just seems a long, long way to the end. Laetare Sunday, however, looms: the mid-Lent day off. It will be very welcome.

Other non-knit

Mungo sent Helen, and she sent me, this enchanting mosaic he saw in a Beirut museum, of the infant Alexander the Great having a bath.




Knitting

Tannehill progresses. There’s much to be said for boring & DK, if you’re keen to get something done.

I continue to think about Fair Isle. Here are the yarns chosen for next weekend’s experiment:



And here they are in tonal form. I think I’m getting the idea.



Thank you very much, Theresa and Karen, for your comments yesterday about my first attempt. At the moment, I am far too impatient to try again with something completely different, to take your advice. But you have persuaded me that it would be a good idea, when I have more or less decided on the motifs and the arrangement I want to go forward with, to knit them together and consider the total effect, as Mucklestone has done for the admirable “Mix and Match” swatches towards the end of her book.

I’m in no hurry – maybe that’s the secret of happy swatching. And the longer the better, as far as the scarf is concerned. Maybe I’d better go ahead and knit this vest before I’m too old to pull it off.


I’ve bought myself sets of coloured pens and pencils (such as everybody needs for their colouring books these days – a most unexpected enthusiasm) and I have been trying to chart the pattern I have chosen in the colours I’m going to use. But the colours of the pens and pencils are pretty remote from the colours of the yarns and it doesn’t work very well. I wish I could find Stitch and Motif Maker.

7 comments:

  1. The addition of Lent to the Works in Progress on your side bar made me smile.

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  2. Anonymous9:58 AM

    I can feel my fair isle swatch scarf getting nearer by the day. Yours is very inspiring, particularly your enthusiastic adoption of grey scale photography to assist. My first step has been to put Mucklestone's book on my wish list. I discovered she was also a Waldorf/Steiner school handwork teacher, which adds to her attraction for me. CarolGilham

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  3. Perhaps try excel? There is a wide range of colors and you can make your own color using their color wheel A lot of designers use this .. Wendy Johnson being one I believe. There is another program that I must look up that is windows based. But probably not available. However good ole excel is. Also google sheets which is fast closing in on excel. I prefer it in fact.

    You are spiking me to get back to colorwork. Maybe it will break my drought of knitting.

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    Replies
    1. Inspiring. Not spiking. Sheesh apple

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  4. Is it just me, or does the lower border of that mosaic look like a peerie pattern?

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    Replies
    1. Anonymous2:28 PM

      I see it, too. But with three colors in a row, more Baltic than Shetland.
      -- Gretchen (aka stashdragon)

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  5. Somehow I had pictured your colour choices leading to a scarlet and yellow mix, whereas your swatch majors on dark green. I do think that it helps to have one colour running throughout as it can become too random otherwise.

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