For the love of color....

I love color.  One of my favorite things is to feast my eyes on all the wonderful colors available in a yarn store. Jewel tones are my preferred palette but I have a complete obsession with variegated yarns.  Finding the perfect superwash variegated yarn was a huge challenge for me for many years until I realized that hand washing worked better for my hand knits anyway and I didn’t really mind washing the kids special knits. It was probably better for my pocketbook when I only bought superwash but whole new horizons have been opened to me since I have expanded my yarn bases.  I love Malabrigo and Manos del Uruguay yarns but I am now discovering the love of Mosaic Moon. I think my obsession with variegation started when I was a new knitter because the beauty of the yarn would hide the imperfections in my knitting! Now that I feel more confident in my abilities and have expanded my knitting repertoire I find myself heading more towards solids and semi-solids that will show off the knitting.
If I am color shopping for myself I tend to go for teals, red and purples.  Can you tell I am a winter? I had to place a personal shopping ban on teal yarns because I had so many it got a little ridiculous. When I first started knitting I would just buy a skein of yarn here and there if the color appealed to me but now I try to have a specific project in mind before I actually purchase yarn.  It helps to rein myself in and really there are only so many teal hats that one girl needs! My personal favorite yarns in my stash right now are a Blue Sky Alpaca Melange in Pomegranate and a Malabrigo in Abril. I think that color is a huge part of your finished garment.  As I have gotten better an more confident in my knitting and as I plan more projects out more in advance I think about the intended recipient and what color is going to work for them rather than the color of the sample.  That being said I find that I am drawn to patterns that have samples that catch my eye!

One good thing about being a mom to boys is that it has expanded my color palette!  If you can imagine my husband frowns on dressing the boys in pinks and purples. Blues wouldn’t be my first choice normally but my oldest son has the bluest eyes ever so it’s fun to find yarns to match his eyes. There is nothing better than pulling on a sweater I have made for him and having his eyes just light up.

Now for someone who loves color my greatest area of weakness is color work. It terrifies me, utterly and truly frightens me to death. I’m not sure why.  I know I possess the skills to carry at least a few strands of yarn together but I can’t seem to get over my phobia.  So for now at least I will go on being obsessed with variegated yarn and solid yarns done in cables and oohing and aaahing over other people’s gorgeous fair isle sweaters or even gently suggesting to my mother (who is a fantastic lifelong knitter) that this or that colorwork project would make a lovely birthday gift. Someday I will tackle something more difficult than stripes! Maybe it will be this sweater which has been living on my Raverly queue for a least a year but combines not only color work but my second biggest fear- steeking!