First: A small update: The last few weeks have been totally crazypants due to moving, beerfest, and then a road trip to Asheville, so I haven’t been around! Now, on to the main event.

This is Knitting and Crochet Blog Week 2012! 

Today’s topic is color… as you might have guessed from the title.

Recently I gave up buying new yarn for Lent. I am not a religious person, but I thought it would be beneficial for me to practice some self-denial and what do I love more than yarn? So I spent about 40 days “shopping my stash,” the same way that some people “shop their closets,” or whatever. The first thing I noticed is that I have a plethora of gray. Light gray, dark gray. Thin gray, thick cushy gray, hairy dark chunky gray. I really love gray and I think it goes with just about everything. I stopped wearing so much black a couple of years ago as I came out of my “high-school punky, early college” stage. In its place went a lot of gray. Plus, I think my eyes look really nice with gray. It’s a great background, etc etc.

Shadow

The other color in my stash? Rainbow. Freakin rainbow. Pink, yellow, green, orange, brown, navy, turquoise, lavender, red, multi, gold, lime green, purple, white, light blue! And that’s just the ones I can see from my current vantage point. I never thought of myself as much of a rainbow person, but I have gotten into colorwork lately and found that I need a lot of colors available to me to brainstorm properly.

My finished projects are also a range of colors – I think that I just gravitate toward rich colors – but I do notice myself wearing the more neutral ones more often. I’ve certainly gotten more wear out of my gray  o w l s  sweater than I have out of my bright pink February Sweater, but I love them both.

My new goal/resolution is to buy more neutral yarns that aren’t straight gray. I really want to create some things that I feel good about wearing more often, and that are more “my style.” It is sometimes uncomfortable for me to stand out as much as I do in my brighter colors, so the more muted ones are easier for me to put on. I’m hoping to create some garments and accessories that are easier to mix and match, with each other and with my other clothes. But I don’t want my closet to turn into a rainy-day fest, so some depth of shade and tones of other colors would be nice.

Currently I have several projects on the needles that are in beautiful neutrals that I’m sure I will love and get a lot of use out of. Color is definitely something I am not afraid to use, but I am constantly pleasantly surprised by the sheer quantity of combinations there are out there. I seem to also do well when confined to one, or one or two colors. My senior project in college was all shades of blue and gray, and that turned out great. The limits imposed allowed me greater freedom within those conditions to explore combinations and textures I wouldn’t have otherwise found.

The takeaway is that I do not feel confined by using one color, but neither do I feel as though I have too many colors. After all, there is plenty of time to get through it all, and I’m never going to not want to knit it.

Flowing Lines