Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Heathers

I'm a member of the Socks Knitters Anonymous group on Ravelry, which is having a sock-a-month knit-along with monthly themes. For most of the months, there's actually a choice of themes, plus a mystery sock (same idea as the Mystery Stole, with a new section of the pattern released each week) that fits one of the themes. I'm signed up to design the mystery socks for July, when the theme is microgauge (that is, an even smaller gauge than is usual for socks).

I told Laura about the knit-along when we met at Rhinebeck (that would be Laura from Schaefer Yarns), so the package she sent a couple of weeks ago included some Heather yarn for that project.



This one is definitely slated for socks. They've asked the designers to have someone test knit the pattern, so I'm going to use another of the skeins for that.


I just can't decide which one, because I'm suddenly very excited about knitting fair isle (mittens or a hat, nothing gigantic) from monochromatic handpainted yarn, and I think the blue/green and one of these browns would be great for that! What I can't tell (since I've only knitted fair isle once before, and that was with solid yarn), is whether I want the 2 colors to have the same amount of internal variation or not.

I mean, since the blue/green skein is both blue and green, would the pattern read better if I used the the brown on the left (actually brown and a very brown kind of pumpkin), or the one on the right (shades of the same brown)? Clearly, I will need to swatch. Maybe I will even take pictures of my swatches, as well as the (now finished) socks I designed and the shawl/blob I'm working on for my sister.

2 comments:

Elizabeth said...

What will really make a difference in how it reads is the value contrast between the two yarns as you move through the color variations. (Value being the relative lightness or darkness; imagine seeing it in black and white.)

Baby Beth said...

You lost me at Fair Isle.